Evaluation Protocol to Assess Maternal and Child Health Outcomes Using Administrative Data: A Community Health Worker Home Visiting Program

Emerging evidence suggests community health workers (CHWs) delivering preventive maternal and child health (MCH) interventions through home visits improve several important health outcomes, including:

• Initiation of prenatal care
• Healthy birth weight
• Uptake of childhood immunizations

Dr. Samantha Sabo, an associate professor in the Department of Health Sciences and the Center for Health Equity Research (CHER) Kelly McCue, also with CHER, Dr. Matthew Butler of Brigham Young University, Dr. Patrick Wightman and Dr. Vern Pilling of the University of Arizona, and Martín Celaya and Sara Rumann of the Arizona Department of Health Services, published the “Evaluation Protocol to Assess Maternal and Child Health Outcomes Using Administrative Data: a Community Health Worker Home Visiting Programme” in the BMJ Open medical Journal on Dec. 10, 2019, using data from the Arizona Health Start Program.

The Arizona Health Start Program is a behavioral-based home visiting intervention, which uses CHWs to improve MCH outcomes through health education, referral support, and advocacy services for at-risk pregnant and postpartum women with children up to 2 years of age. The study evaluated Health Start Program administrative data from 2006 to 2015, equaling 15,576 enrollees.

In their study, they tested their central hypothesis that mothers and children exposed to preventative maternal and child health interventions through CHW home visits experience positive health outcomes in:

• Newborn health
• Maternal health and healthcare utilization
• Child health and development

For more information, read Evaluation Protocol to Assess Maternal and Child Health Outcomes Using Administrative Data: A Community Health Worker Home Visiting Programme.