The challenge
Children living in poverty suffer a disproportionate number of injuries, are poorly prepared for school and experience nutritional deficits.
The case
Between 1978 and 1980 researcher David Olds randomly assigned 400 pregnant women having their first baby in and around Elmira, a semi-rural community in New York State, either to nurse home visits or to a comparison group. Visited families received on average 9 visits during pregnancy and 23 from birth to the child's second birthday. Fifteen years later, mothers who had been visited were identified as perpetrators in 0.29 verified reports of child abuse and neglect, against 0.54 in the comparison group. Among mothers who were unmarried and low-income at the start, those visited spent 60 rather than 90 months on welfare and had 0.16 rather than 0.90 arrests in state records.
Why it worked
Early, sustained support from nurses changed the course of mothers' and children's lives for at least 15 years. Olds replicated the Elmira results in Memphis and Denver, and in 1996 his team created a nonprofit to help other communities run the program, now the Nurse-Family Partnership.
Sources
- Cornell Chronicle (2009). CU study on nurse home visits has led to national program.
- Olds, D. L., Eckenrode, J., Henderson, C. R., et al. (1997). Long-term effects of home visitation on maternal life course and child abuse and neglect: Fifteen-year follow-up of a randomized trial. JAMA, 278(8), 637–643.
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