Healthy Start provides direct funding to local entities. Healthy Start awardees serve communities in which babies die more often than the national average. Healthy Start awardees are in 35 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
The Home Visiting program awards grants to states, territories and jurisdictions to create state-wide networks that support and carry out HHS-approved evidence-based home visiting models.
While both programs play a vital role in improving maternal and child health, they do so in distinct ways:
The Healthy Start Program:
- Focuses on reducing infant deaths
- Provides flexibility to tailor services to meet specific family and community needs, such as
- Providing both clinical and non-clinical health services
- Offering well-woman, maternity care, and doula services
- Helping with transportation and housing needs
The Home Visiting Program:
- Focuses on early childhood development, especially:
- Preventing child abuse and neglect
- Promoting positive parenting
- Supporting school readiness
- States choose evidence-based models that fit their community’s needs
And, each program emphasizes different parts of the life course:
- The Healthy Start Program focuses on the period before, during, and after pregnancy.
- While some Home Visiting models focus on the time before birth, many models serve families throughout the early childhood period up until kindergarten.