Inventory of Evidence-Based Practices (EBPs) for Healthy Start Programs
Evidence-based practices include actions, activities, strategies, or approaches that improve the health of women, before, during, and after pregnancy in order to improve birth outcomes and give infants up to age two years a healthy start. Also included in the collection are informational materials and tools that make it easier to implement evidence-based practices. To search by title, use the main search box located at the top of this page.
The Boston Basics Campaign is inspired by the fact that 80% of brain growth happens in the first three years of life. During this period, skill gaps between socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic groups become clearly apparent, but this does not need to be. Everyday interactions between children, their parents, and other caregivers provide abundant opportunities to give children from every background a more equal start in life. The Basics are five, fun, simple, and powerful ways that every family can give every child a strong start beginning from birth: 1) maximize love, manage stress, 2) talk, sing and point, 3) count, group and compare, 4) explore through movement and play, and 5) read and discuss stories. The Basics Community Toolkit provides multi-media resources that healthcare and community-based organizations can use to engage and support parents and other caregivers in practicing these basics.The Boston Basics website and materials are also available in Spanish.
Topics:
Parenting Education Socio-emotional Development for Children
Approaches:
Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Father/Partner Parenting Involvement Father/Partner Prenatal Involvement Reading to Child Daily
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
This prevention resource guide offers information, strategies, and resources to support community service providers as they work with parents, caregivers, and children to prevent child maltreatment and promote social and emotional well-being. The guide focuses on protective factors that build on family strengths and promote optimal child and youth development. Information about protective factors is augmented with tools and strategies that help providers, advocates and policymakers integrate the factors into community programs and systems. The guide includes tip sheets for parents in English and Spanish on a range of parenting and child development topics.
Topics:
Intimate Partner Violence Life Course Model Parenting Education Partner Involvement Socio-emotional Development for Children
Approaches:
Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Father/Partner Parenting Involvement Father/Partner Prenatal Involvement Intimate Partner Violence
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
This webpage offers resources for providers and families on safe sleep practices. Resources for providers include the AAP Policy Statement: SIDS and Other Sleep-Related Infant Deaths: Updated 2016 Recommendations for a Safe Infant Sleeping Environment. Resources for families include a videos, posters and infographics on safe sleep practices.
Topics:
Parenting Education Safe Sleep
Approaches:
Promote Quality
Benchmarks:
Safe Sleep
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
This toolkit is designed to help health centers to build a comprehensive and sustainable response to domestic violence and sexual assault (DV/SA) in partnership with DV/SA advocacy programs (social service organizations).Through five essential steps, health centers and social service partners can build partnerships, adopt evidence-based interventions, promote patient education around IPV, and enhance practice policies, procedures, and capacities to improve long-term health and safety outcomes for women and their families.
Topics:
Case Management/Care Coordination Intimate Partner Violence Patient-centered Medical Home Risk Assessment
Approaches:
Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Intimate Partner Violence
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
Connected Kids is a program of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) designed to address the important issue of violence prevention. One third of the program is devoted to infants and toddlers, and contains suggested anticipatory guidance, a counseling schedule, and recommended educational brochures. Covered issues include handling parental frustration, disciplining toddlers, safety in the home, and a discussion of firearms. Although the program is designed for pediatricians, it could be useful to anyone working with parents of young children.
Topics:
Parenting Education Socio-emotional Development for Children
Approaches:
Benchmarks:
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
Safe Homes, Safe Babies is a safety card for women that perinatal health care providers can distribute to patients. In addition to providing safety resources for women, this tool also functions as a prompt for perinatal health care providers by providing quick phrases to improve discussions with women about the impact of domestic violence on their parenting and children. The safety card outlines questions women may ask themselves about their relationships, birth control use and parenting, while offering supportive messages and referrals to national support services for help.
Topics:
Depression Intimate Partner Violence Risk Assessment
Approaches:
Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Intimate Partner Violence Perinatal Depression Screening
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
The American Academy of Pediatrics FASD Toolkit was developed in coordination with the CDC to raise awareness, promote surveillance and screening, and ensure that all children who possibly have FASDs receive appropriate and timely interventions. Focused primarily on providers, it features basic information on FASD, diagnostic tools for use in children suspected of being affected, evidence-based interventions, and guidelines for case management/care coordination. The site also contains FAQ and a list of resources for families and school professionals who care for children with FASD.
Topics:
Alcohol/Drug Services Case Management/Care Coordination Parenting Education
Approaches:
Benchmarks:
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
Failure to address IPV among women who use alcohol or other drugs has been found to increase the likelihood of continued drug use, relapse, attrition from drug treatment and a host of other negative physical and mental health consequences. WINGS is a single-session intervention that aims to address a critical gap in IPV services for women by identifying women in the community at risk of IPV, enabling them to develop social support and safety planning skills to reduce their risks for IPV and linking them to IPV-related services and substance use treatment. The intervention may be delivered in-person or via a computerized self-paced version.
Topics:
Alcohol/Drug Services Intimate Partner Violence
Approaches:
Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Intimate Partner Violence
Evidence Rating:
II. Promising practices—Innovative practices employed in the field, based on state-of-science knowledge about what works to improve outcomes, and gathering evidence of effectiveness.
This manual is designed for training community health workers on how to support expecting and new mothers with depression, using evidence-based cognitive behavioral techniques. Community Health Workers can assist depressed mothers to change their unhealthy patterns of thinking and behavior, leading to an improvement in their mood and functioning, and prevention of later problems in their infants. The manual provides a step-by-step guide for CHWs implementing the Thinking Healthy intervention in 15 sessions with mothers (from pregnancy through baby’s first 10 months), and includes a structured process for each session, activities, worksheets and charts, and communication tips. This manual is a generic version for global use of a manual originally developed in Pakistan and later used in many other countries.
Topics:
Depression Parenting Education
Approaches:
Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Perinatal Depression Follow Up Perinatal Depression Screening
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
This webpage provides basic information on a variety of contraceptive methods, including a link to a poster comparing typical effectiveness of contraceptive methods. The poster can be used to show women and men the range of contraception choices available to them, and which methods work best at preventing pregnancy. The webpage also provides additional resources on contraception for health care providers and consumers.
Topics:
Reproductive Life Planning/Family Planning
Approaches:
Improve Women's Health Promote Quality
Benchmarks:
Reproductive Life Plan
Evidence Rating:
I. Evidence-based practices—have been rigorously evaluated and shown to be effective by MCH experts.
Mental Health First Aid is an 8-hour course that gives people the skills to help someone who is developing a mental health problem or experiencing a mental health crisis. The evidence behind the program demonstrates that it does build mental health literacy, helping the public identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental illness. Mental Health First Aiders learn a 5-step action plan that guides them through the process of reaching out and offering appropriate support. The “adult course” is available in both English and Spanish, and covers anxiety, depression, psychosis, and addictions in adults. The “youth course” is for adults who interact regularly with young people ages 12-18.
Topics:
Alcohol/Drug Services Depression
Approaches:
Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Perinatal Depression Follow Up Perinatal Depression Screening
Evidence Rating:
II. Promising practices—Innovative practices employed in the field, based on state-of-science knowledge about what works to improve outcomes, and gathering evidence of effectiveness.
This component of the Child Development section of the CDC website provides information for parents on developmental milestones and positive parenting tips by age group, covering children 0-17 years of age. Age-specific injury prevention and safety advice as well as guidelines for promoting healthy bodies are also given. Parents or service providers for parents can download Positive Parenting Tip Sheets for use as take-home handouts.
Topics:
Parenting Education Partner Involvement Socio-emotional Development for Children
Approaches:
Promote Quality Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Father/Partner Parenting Involvement
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
Counseling parents and children about the prevention of common childhood injuries is an important contribution toward preventing the major cause of childhood morbidity and mortality. TIPP is designed to provide a systematic method for pediatricians to counsel parents and children about adopting behaviors to prevent injuries—behaviors that are effective and capable of being accomplished by most families.This Guide includes a table showing the major safety issues and injury hazards for each age group for children 0-10 years old, and provides counseling guidelines for educating parents about injury prevention tailored to the age of their child.
Topics:
Parenting Education
Approaches:
Benchmarks:
Well Child Visits
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
This section of the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse provides resources on healthy relationships for programs that serve families. Healthy marriages and healthy relationships can serve an important role in promoting responsible fatherhood initiatives. Whether the fathers and families in your programs are currently married or not, integrating healthy relationship skills into your programs can better support fathers’ relationships with their partners and improve their co-parenting situations, leading to healthier models and environments for their children.
Topics:
Partner Involvement
Approaches:
Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Father/Partner Parenting Involvement Father/Partner Prenatal Involvement
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
Medical‐legal partnership (MLP) is an approach to health that integrates the work of healthcare, public health, and civil legal aid to more effectively identify, treat, and prevent health‐harming legal needs for patients, clinics, and populations. MLP addresses legal needs in the areas of income supports and insurance; housing and utilities; employment and education; legal status; and personal and family stability. MLP:
- Trains healthcare, public health, and legal teams to work collaboratively and identify needs upstream;
- Treats individual patients’ health‐harming social and legal needs with legal care ranging from triage and consultations to legal representation;
- Transforms clinic practice and institutional policies to better respond to patients’ health‐harming social and legal needs; and
- Prevents health‐harming legal needs broadly by detecting patterns and improving policies and regulations that have an impact on population health.
Topics:
Case Management/Care Coordination Insurance Coverage Other Risk Assessment
Approaches:
Achieve Collective Impact Improve Women's Health
Benchmarks:
CAN Implementation Health Insurance
Evidence Rating:
II. Promising practices—Innovative practices employed in the field, based on state-of-science knowledge about what works to improve outcomes, and gathering evidence of effectiveness.
Reach Out and Read is an evidence-based non-profit organization of medical providers who promote early literacy and school readiness in pediatric exam rooms nationwide by integrating children’s books and advice to parents about the importance of reading aloud into well-child visits. Reach Out and Read builds on the unique relationship between parents and medical providers to develop critical early reading skills in children, beginning in infancy.
Topics:
Other Parenting Education
Approaches:
Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Reading to Child Daily
Evidence Rating:
II. Promising practices—Innovative practices employed in the field, based on state-of-science knowledge about what works to improve outcomes, and gathering evidence of effectiveness.
These three brief (2-3 minute) videos explore resilience, a positive adaptive response to serious adversity in a young child’s life, and how it is built. A better understanding of how resilience develops can help develop policies and programs to help more children reach their full potential.
Topics:
Parenting Education Socio-emotional Development for Children
Approaches:
Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Father/Partner Parenting Involvement
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
The Magic of Everyday Moments video series is designed to help parents and professionals understand how they can best help very young children thrive. The first in the series explores brain development, early literacy skills, the power of play, and temperament. The second examines development in each of the first three years of life.
Topics:
Parenting Education Socio-emotional Development for Children
Approaches:
Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Father/Partner Parenting Involvement
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
Guide to breastfeeding interventions that have been reviewed by the Cochrane Collaboration and published through the Cochrane Library, a comprehensive collection of up-to-date information on the effects of health care interventions.
Topics:
Breastfeeding
Approaches:
Promote Quality
Benchmarks:
Initiating Breastfeeding Sustaining Breastfeeding
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
This document provides guidance for public health professionals and others on how to select strategies to support breastfeeding mothers and increase breastfeeding rates. It offers the most relevant information on each type of strategy. Includes information that may be important to keep in mind during the planning, implementation, or evaluation phases of a strategy. Identifies specific activities for each strategy that public health professionals can take to implement strategies in specific settings, including communities, schools, child care facilities, work sites, and medical care facilities. Includes examples of programs that use the strategy as a way to support and increase breastfeeding.
Topics:
Breastfeeding
Approaches:
Promote Quality
Benchmarks:
Initiating Breastfeeding Sustaining Breastfeeding
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
The Touchpoints approach offers healthcare providers and early education professionals a framework to build better partnerships with families around mutual strengths-based caregiving and parent engagement, all of which benefit child outcomes. Rooted in child social, emotional and behavioral development, Touchpoints seeks to improve parent-provider relationships, improve provider relationships with each other, enhance parent-infant relationships, moderate parental stress, normalize parent’s perceptions of their child’s behavior, increase well-child care adherence, improve infant developmental outcomes, improve maternal mental health indicators, and encourage longer breastfeeding. A variety of professional tools, training activities and learning communities are offered for providers.
Topics:
Breastfeeding Other Parenting Education Socio-emotional Development for Children
Approaches:
Promote Quality
Benchmarks:
Initiating Breastfeeding Sustaining Breastfeeding
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
: Learn the Signs, Act Early aims to improve early identification of children with autism and other developmental disabilities so children and families can get needed services and support. The program has three components: a health education campaign, the Act Early initiative, and research and evaluation. The campaign promotes awareness of healthy developmental milestones during childhood, and the importance of tracking each child’s development and acting early if there are concerns. The Act Early Initiative works with state, territorial and national partners to improve early childhood screening and referral systems. The program website includes many free materials for providers, health centers and parents, videos and other multimedia tools and training programs for providers.
Topics:
Parenting Education Socio-emotional Development for Children
Approaches:
Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Reading to Child Daily
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
The Ten Steps are the broad framework that guide the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative. They were developed by a team of global experts and consist of evidence-based practices that have been shown to increase breastfeeding initiation and duration. Baby-Friendly® hospitals and birthing facilities must adhere to the Ten Steps to receive, and retain, a Baby-Friendly designation. This webpage lists the Ten Steps and the endorsing organizations and links to supporting resources for both hospitals and parents.
Topics:
Breastfeeding
Approaches:
Promote Quality
Benchmarks:
Initiating Breastfeeding Sustaining Breastfeeding
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
Staff training materials to train WIC staff in the skills required to promote and support breastfeeding in the WIC setting. Addresses adult learning strategies and core breastfeeding competencies for staff. Evidence based and informed by focus groups and interviews. Includes a CD of training materials, and video trainings available on DVD.
Topics:
Breastfeeding
Approaches:
Promote Quality
Benchmarks:
Initiating Breastfeeding Sustaining Breastfeeding
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
This toolkit for providers offered by Futures without Violence® includes assessment tools for screening women for IPV in a clinical setting, and information on supported referral and counseling. Accompanying materials available for purchase include promotional materials for healthcare settings, and the publication Addressing Intimate Partner Violence, Reproductive and Sexual Coercion: A Guide for Obstetric, Gynecologic and Reproductive Health Care Settings.
Topics:
Intimate Partner Violence
Approaches:
Strengthen Family Resilience
Benchmarks:
Intimate Partner Violence
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
The SCRIPT program is designed to be a component of a patient education program for prenatal care providers. The program includes A Pregnant Woman’s Guide to Quit Smoking, a 40 page guide outlining a self-evaluation process to help women quit smoking over a 7 day period; a 15 minute motivational DVD; comprehensive counseling to help pregnant smokers quit or reduce their smoking; and follow up programming to help mothers establish a non-smoking home after birth.
Topics:
Tobacco Cessation
Approaches:
Promote Quality
Benchmarks:
Smoking Abstinence
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
This toolbox is an online resource for Maternal and Child Health researchers, academics, practitioners, policy advocates, and others in the field to share information, innovative strategies, and tools to integrate the Life Course Perspective into MCH work at the local, state, and national levels. Includes resources and tools to learn about the Life Course Perspective and strategies to incorporate the Life Course model into practice and policy.
Topics:
Life Course Model
Approaches:
Improve Women's Health
Benchmarks:
Usual Source of Care
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
An easy-to-implement, evidence-based clinical counseling approach. The 5 A’s: Ask, Advise, Assess, Assist, and Arrange are 5 steps providers can use to identify appropriate interventions based on a patient’s willingness to quit.
Topics:
Tobacco Cessation
Approaches:
Promote Quality
Benchmarks:
Smoking Abstinence
Evidence Rating:
III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.
