Rachel Segal, MD, Pediatric Fellow, received a 2-year, $6,380 grant from the Ray E. Helfer Society.

Dr. Segal’s project, “Understanding Home Visitor Attendance at Well Child Checks: A Qualitative Study,” aims to gather evidence of the effectiveness of home visiting programs.

Home visiting continues to be viewed as an important service that can potentially improve child health and outcomes. Both child maltreatment and overall child health are foci of nearly all home visiting programs, as the two are inter-related, but evidence of the effectiveness of home visiting programs is currently inconsistent.

Promise 1000 is a collective impact home visiting collaborative in the Greater Kansas City Region that includes agencies using multiple home visiting models. A novel approach in home visiting programming is the attendance of a home visitor at well child checks (WCCs) to provide a more consistent and meaningful link between home visiting and pediatrics.

This research project aims to understand participant perceptions of the benefits and challenges of home visitors attending WCCs with families through qualitative study of focus groups of 1) home visitors, 2) health care providers, and 3) parents. Nested within a larger study measuring quantitative outcomes of home visitors attending WCCs, this qualitative study examines participant perceptions of challenges and benefits to this novel approach.

“Home visiting continues to be viewed as an important service which can potentially improve child health and wellbeing but clarifying the effectiveness of certain characteristics of home visiting programs is essential.” said Dr. Segal. “These observations will inform process improvements focused on the effectiveness of this novel Promise 1000 practice which aims to improve child health and decrease child maltreatment.”