Prenatal Care and Home Visiting

Setting the stage for positive outcomes for children begin before birth. Iowa has long been committed to the health of children and families and has led the nation in home-visiting programs to support families . Home visiting services support children and families through prenatal, birth, and early childhood, but services are fragmented across different provider types, funding streams, and even administrative authorities. This means the data about families served is also siloed. I2D2 was identified to help integrate these data to better understand the needs of Iowa families with young children and guide program leaders and policy-makers in identifying challenges and creating solutions for prenatal care and home visiting programs.

In 2019, I2D2 began collaborations to integrate home visiting records with other public administrative datasets that informed some of the work of ECI 2019 Statewide Needs Assessment. Subsequently, with funding from Iowa’s Maternal Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting program (MIECHV), the team has explored a host of projects investigating prenatal needs, care, and service use including:

• The used indicators from 2010 Title V MIECHV Home Visiting Assessment from Iowa’s Department of Public Health and the 2019 National Center for Children in Poverty Report to helped paint the picture of trends and outcomes for children at the time.
• In 2021, I2D2 completed a study about birth characteristics and risks, family characteristics in home visiting programs, and program enrollment related to home visiting program completion (Technical Report: Birth Risks and Timing of Enrollment in Home Visiting)
• In 2022, as part of a follow-up statewide needs assessment I2D2 collected a statewide survey of families to understand more about family knowledge of existing information, experiences with programs such as home visiting, and identified barriers to service that kept families out of programs (Iowa Families with Young Children: 2022 Statewide Family Survey Report.
• Another body of work involved investigating the impact of birthing hospital closures on maternal and child health. Since 2000, 41 birthing units have closed and Iowa’s Obstetrician Summit expressed great concern of the potential impact. Home visiting leadership was also interested to see how these services might be supportive for families living in closure areas. (see Access to Care, Outcomes, and Birthing Unit Closures). In October 2023, I2D2 presented findings at the Maternal Health Symposium on Prenatal Care, Birth Outcomes, and Hospital Closures in Iowa.

I2D2 continues to expand this work, including partnership with the MIECHV leadership to continue prenatal service use analyses and investigating ways to bring more data tools to community leaders in support of program improvement efforts.