Tracking the Impact of Early Childhood Health Programs

Fellows: Adam Fishman, Emily Rowe, Joe Walsh
Data Science Mentor(s): Nick Mader
Project Partner: Nurse-Family Partnership
[Github Repository]

When a young woman becomes pregnant before she’s ready, the risk factors for her and her baby escalate. Too often, the result is poverty, instability, and despair.

Nurse-Family Partnership intervenes by pairing specially trained nurses with low-income families. Expecting mothers receive nurse home visits from pregnancy until the baby is two years old. The result: more successful pregnancies, more stable families, and healthier kids that do better in school and life.

NFP’s approach is based on successful randomized controlled trials. They’ve been around for many years and have programs throughout the country. But as federal health care reform invests millions of dollars into home nurse visits, they’re being asked to quantify their recent impact on child health and family stability.

In 2013, we measured their effectiveness by analyzing three years of data on NFP’s interventions and family outcomes. You can read more about this project here.

We continued working with the Nurse-Family Partnership in 2014 on Predicting Success in Mother-Child Interventions. You can find information on that project on our website.