Project Description:
The Missoula City-County Health Department's Welcome Home Baby (WHB) program provides a free, voluntary home visit, conducted by a public health nurse, to any mother who lives in Missoula County within the first few weeks of delivering a baby. Through the WHB program, public health nurses support families through the physical and emotional changes following birth; by providing support for nutrition and breastfeeding; conduct developmental screenings; provide education for safe sleep, positive parenting skills, and behavior management; help navigating community resources and referrals; and by providing general support and education. The service aims to improve care coordination and community resource navigation by making referrals for the parent and infant, as well as connecting the family to identified resource needs, such as support with housing or transportation. The WHB staff strive to combat the stigma against home visiting by emphasizing the universal intent of the program; the service is available to all Missoula County postpartum individuals; there are no income or other eligibility requirements. The Rural Institute for Inclusive Communities (RIIC) is the evaluation partner for the Welcome Home Baby program and is contracted for 12-months. The impact evaluation will use a mixed methods approach to provide MCCHD with information about the impact or changes the Welcome Home Baby program has brought to the lives of families with a newborn in Missoula County. The evaluation design will include the production of a survey instrument for recruitment, an interview guide, data collection, data analysis, and reports to MCCHD. As a secondary objective of this evaluation, MCCHD would like to contribute to the evidence and literature on the value of universal home visiting. The results of this evaluation study will be used to improve the quality of the program and will be generalized and disseminated through peer-reviewed publications to the public health scientific community.
