Healthy Start EPIC Center
Increase the proportion of HS grantees that demonstrate father and/or partner involvement (e.g., attend appointments, classes, infant/child care) during pregnancy to 90%
Paternal involvement has an impact on both pregnancy and infant outcomes. The father or partner can, for example, participate in childbirth classes, prenatal and pediatric medical appointments, and infant care. Paternal involvement during pregnancy has been shown to reduce negative maternal health behaviors, risk of preterm birth, fetal growth restriction, and low birth weight.
A Performance Measure Resource Sheet is available summarizing recommended strategies and a selection of resources and evidence-based practices related to this benchmark to aid Healthy Start grantee organizations, partners and their staff in supporting the women and families they serve.
Featured Resource: Evidence-Based Practice
DoctorDad® Workshops are for new and expectant dads, and helps increase fathers’ health literacy by providing men with the knowledge and skills they need to successfully care for their young children right from the start. DoctorDad® Workshops cover a wide range of important child health and safety skills. Mix and match topics in four separate workshops.
Meeting Materials:
The Family Foundations program has been shown in NIH-funded research to help couples create strong, nurturing family bonds and raise well-adjusted children. Developed by clinical psychologist, family therapist, and prevention scientist Mark Feinberg, Ph.D. DVDs and workbooks help parents learn how to work together as an effective team to promote children’s sleep, self-regulation, attention, social competence, and well-being. Topic areas addressed in the program include: preparing for parenthood; working as a team; managing conflict; division of labor; planning fun and affection; and teaching and discipline. Includes 6 DVDs, with nearly 6 hours of content broken into 11 chapters, and a detailed workbook for each parent.
Growing Great Kids (GGK) is a comprehensive and skills-focused home visiting curriculum that takes a strength-based approach to growing nurturing parent-child relationships and supporting healthy childhood development. GGK modules are specifically designed to build protective factors for children, strengthen family foundations, and cultivate parental resilience. Training for home visitors to be certified to deliver the curriculum builds their competencies for: nurturing parental resiliency; advancing individual and family functioning; reducing a child’s exposure to toxic stress; nurturing parents’ problem-solving skills; strengthening the families’ support networks; and enabling parents to construct protective buffers around their children.
Nationally recognized, research-based, practice-informed curriculum used by many home visiting models to meet their program goals including improving birth outcomes, reducing rates of child abuse, strengthening families, enhancing child health and developmental outcomes, and promoting family stability and economic self-sufficiency. The curriculum addresses issues of child health and development within the context of the multifaceted needs of expectant and parenting families. Five-volume book series for different stages in pregnancy/parenthood, accompanied by a set of handouts for the home visitor to use when planning visits. Handouts for families can be purchased in English or Spanish and help the home visitor introduce subjects that may otherwise be difficult to talk about.
Father/Partner Involvement Home Visiting Parenting Education
The PALS curriculum was developed to facilitate parents’ mastery of specific skills for interacting with their infants and toddlers that lead to better child outcomes, particularly in children from high-risk families. PALS was designed as a preventive intervention program to strengthen the parent-child bond and stimulate early language, cognitive, and social development. The PALS Infant curriculum consists of 10 sessions and is appropriate for parents of infants from about age five months to one year. The PALS Toddler curriculum consists of 12 sessions and is appropriate for parents of toddlers from about age 18 months to 3 years.
Parenting Education Socio-emotional Development for Children
PAT aims to increase parent knowledge of early childhood development and improve parenting practices, provide early detection of developmental delays and health issues, prevent child abuse and neglect, and increase children’s school readiness and school success. The PAT model consists of one-on-one home visits, group connections/meetings, health and developmental screenings for children, and a resource network for parents. Program lasts for at least two years, beginning as early as pregnancy and ending at the child’s 3rd birthday or at kindergarten entry.
Home Visiting Parenting Education Socio-emotional Development for Children
Uses child development principles to boost parent confidence, facilitate parent-child bonding, and promote breastfeeding duration. HUG has been implemented in many countries and can been integrated into nursing programs, hospitals, home visitation programs, prenatal clinics, etc. Materials include DVDs, e-newsletters, blogs, music video songs, social media, posters, and online courses. Also includes The Roadmap to Breastfeeding Success, an additional lactation online course that integrates best practices in lactation support with child development theory.
Prenatal Plus is a program that provides care coordination, nutrition and mental health counseling to Medicaid-eligible pregnant women in Colorado who are at a high risk for delivering low birth weight infants. The program uses the client-centered counseling approach with all participants to address a variety of issues that have been shown to have a negative impact on birth outcomes. The key health areas targeted by this program are healthy weight, smoking cessation and depression. The program has been demonstrated to decrease the rate of low-birth weight infants and resolve the risks putting women at risk of delivering low-birth weight infants.
Case Management/Care Coordination Depression Healthy Weight Tobacco Cessation