Home Visiting

OPRE manages research and evaluation activities related to the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program.


Home visiting is a service delivery strategy that aims to support the healthy development and well-being of children and families. While each home visiting model has its unique aspects, in general, home visiting involves three main intervention activities conducted through one-on-one interactions between home visitors and families: assessing family needs, educating and supporting parents, and referring families to needed services in the community. Early childhood home visiting programs aim to improve a wide range of outcomes including maternal health, child health and development, child maltreatment prevention, and family economic self-sufficiency.

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The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) administers the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program in collaboration with ACF, which oversees the Tribal MIECHV program. The Tribal MIECHV program provides grants to tribes, tribal organizations, and Urban Indian Organizations to develop, implement, and evaluate home visiting programs in American Indian and Alaska Native communities. The MIECHV Program carries out a continuous program of research and evaluation activities in order to increase knowledge about the implementation and effectiveness of home visiting programs. OPRE, in collaboration with HRSA and with the Tribal MIECHV program, oversees a majority of the MIECHV-funded research and evaluation projects.

The home visiting field has engaged in research and evaluation for decades, generating a rich literature on the effects of home visiting. Studies have found home visiting impacts on child development, school readiness, family economic self-sufficiency, maternal health, reductions in child maltreatment, child health, positive parenting practices, juvenile delinquency, family violence, and crime. While effects have varied across studies, overall, the research indicates that home visiting has had modest benefits for families on average. However, there are still significant gaps in our understanding—and even more still to learn if we want to keep improving the effectiveness and efficiency of services.

Major OPRE research and evaluation projects studying home visiting include the Multi-Site Implementation Evaluation of Tribal Home Visiting (MUSE), the Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness (HomVEE) project, and the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (MIHOPE).

Home Visiting Research and Evaluation Snapshot

OPRE’s work in the area of home visiting is guided by the ACF Research and Evaluation Agenda for child welfare. In setting home visiting research and evaluation priorities for this agenda, ACF takes into account legislative requirements and Congressional interests; the interest and needs of ACF, HHS, and administration leadership; program office staff and leadership; ACF partners; the populations served; researchers; and others. ACF routinely interacts with these groups through a variety of engagement activities that inform our ongoing research and evaluation planning processes. Learn more by exploring this snapshot of Agenda guidance directing OPRE’s home visiting research and evaluation.

Explore the Snapshot

Featured Resources

Projects on this Topic

Explore the HomVEE review of the evidence of effectiveness for early childhood home visiting models that serve families with pregnant women and children from birth to kindergarten entry.

The Center for Indigenous Research Collaborations and Learning for Home Visiting (CIRCLE-HV) supports two types of research-practice collaborations to build evidence and understanding about home visiting and well-being in Indigenous communities.

The Child and Family Data Archive (CFData) is the place to discover, access, and analyze data on young children, their families and communities, and the programs that serve them. OPRE funds numerous data collection efforts through research studies on a wide range of early care and education (ECE) topics within and across child care, Head Start, and home visiting.

Discover this project’s work to understand how and why Head Start grantees prepare for and engage in enrollment conversions, and its aim to identify facilitators and barriers to the provision of high-quality Early Head Start services that meet community needs.

Explore Baby FACES reports, data tables, briefs, and other publications about Early Head Start programs, centers, home visitors, classrooms, teachers, children and families.

In this annual report, learn about OPRE's family strengthening research portfolio. Explore current research and evaluation projects related to strengthening relationships within families, supporting fatherhood, nurturing children through their families, reducing teen pregnancy, supporting youth in their transition to adulthood, and preventing family violence.

The Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (MIHOPE) is a longitudinal study examining whether families and children benefit from MIECHV-funded early childhood home visiting programs, and if so, how.

Explore the Multi-Site Implementation Evaluation of Tribal Home Visiting (MUSE) to learn about the mixed methods approaches in progress to understand how the evidence-based Maternal Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program is being implemented in American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

The Network of infant/toddler Researchers (NitR) consortium brings together leading applied researchers with policymakers and technical assistance providers responsible for overseeing and supporting early childhood programs serving families during pregnancy and the first three years of life.

In 2013, OPRE commissioned four interrelated reports on self-regulation and toxic stress from a team at the Center for Child and Social Policy at Duke University. That team and other experts have since created multiple practice-oriented resources grounded in the initial reports. Together, these reports and resources comprise the ’Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress Series.’ 

The purpose of this project is to advance understanding of how home visiting programs funded by the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) and Tribal MIECHV Programs can and do support family economic well-being.  

Family economic well-being is key to families’ long-term stability and is linked to positive outcomes in other areas targeted by home visiting programs, such as parenting.

Explore the Supporting and Strengthening the Home Visiting Workforce page for reports and practitioner resources on professional well-being and reflective supervision.

Explore the Tribal Early Childhood Research Center (TRC)'s goals for addressing gaps in early childhood research with American Indian and Alaska Native families through partnerships with tribal Head Start, Early Head Start, child care, and home visiting programs.

Tribal Home Visiting Evaluation Institute (TEI)

2010-2016 & 2015-2019, 2019-2024

Explore OPRE's Tribal Home Visiting Evaluation Institute (TEI) page for resources from data and evaluation capacity building efforts in Tribal Home Visiting.

Explore how the Tribal Research Center for Early Childhood Development and Systems (TRC) promotes excellence in community-based participatory research and evaluation of ACF early childhood initiatives that serve tribal communities.

Explore how home visiting programs can be benefitted by identifying, developing, studying, and disseminating evidence-informed resources and strategies that can be implemented to ensure more equitable access to and participation of families in home visiting and, ultimately, more positive outcomes for children and families.

The purpose of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program Evaluation ("the Committee") was to advise the Secretary of Health and Human Services on the design, plan, and progress of the evaluation, and to comment on the MIHOPE Report to Congress (PDF)...
 

The American Indian and Alaska Native Early Childhood Needs Assessment Project (AI/AN EC Needs Assessment) seeks to lay the foundation for understanding the need for early childhood services in American Indian and Alaska Native communities.  The project outlines a series of designs for future studies that will inform a national assessment of the unmet need for early childhood care, education, and home visiting services (prenatal to age 5) in tribal communities...

The AMC-HV project worked to identify and apply innovative methods to better understand the community-level systems and networks in which the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program operates, including referral networks and community resources.

The DOHVE 2.0 project provided technical assistance related to data, research, and evaluation to Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program awardees.

The Design Options for Home Visiting Evaluation (DOHVE) project supports the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program and includes two key components...

The Family Level Assessment and State of Home Visiting (FLASH-V) project was designed to help contribute to the field’s understanding of how programs identify potentially eligible families, and the outreach and referral strategies used to enroll families and fill caseloads.

In 2018, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) initiated the Funding Home Visiting with a Pay for Outcomes Approach project to learn from past and current projects in home visiting that utilize Pay for Outcomes (PFO).

The Home Visiting: Approaches to Father Engagement and Fathers' Experiences Study is a qualitative project that will collect information about innovative approaches used by existing home visiting programs to actively...

Explore this descriptive study focused on rural contexts to understand the unique opportunities and challenges for administering human services in those communities.

The Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation-Strong Start (MIHOPE-Strong Start) was launched in 2012 to evaluate the effectiveness of evidence-based home visiting for improving prenatal and birth outcomes and reducing health care...

Explore the Touchpoints for Addressing Substance Use In Home Visiting page for a conceptual model and review of the literature on how home visiting programs can support families dealing with substance use issues.