MIECHV Evaluation & Research

HRSA, in partnership with the Administration of Children and Families (ACF), supports awardees in conducting rigorous evaluations of their programs. State-led evaluations help to a) build the evidence of effectiveness on promising approach home visiting models, b) examine the replication of evidence-based home visiting models across new settings and contexts, c) answer questions of local salience, and d) use empirical information to improve service delivery.

Awardees who chose to implement a model that qualifies as a promising approach are required to conduct a well-designed and rigorous evaluation of the program’s impact. MIECHV evaluations of promising approach models are expected to help build the evidence base around the service delivery model towards the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) evidence of effectiveness. See the HHS’ Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness website.

In FY 2021, HRSA launched a new approach to voluntary, state-led evaluation of evidence-based home visiting programs. Under this new approach, referred to as coordinated state evaluation, MIECHV awardees conducting state-led evaluation must select to conduct evaluation on a priority topic, identified by HRSA, in coordination with other MIECHV awardees. In consultation with key partners, HRSA identified three priority topic areas in which awardees could propose to conduct coordinated state evaluations:

• Family engagement,
• Maternal health, and
• Workforce development.

Participating awardees work together in peer networks with technical assistance specialists to plan and conduct evaluations aligned around a shared agenda and common elements.

HRSA places an emphasis on dissemination, encouraging awardees to share information and learn from each other by highlighting evaluation experiences and findings through webinars, technical assistance documents, program newsletters, and meetings and conferences.

ACF, in collaboration with HRSA, is overseeing a large-scale, random assignment evaluation of the effectiveness of the MIECHV Program: The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Evaluation (MIHOPE).

On July 1, 2022, HRSA awarded $1.5 million to Johns Hopkins University to support a cooperative agreement for the Home Visiting Research and Development (R&D) Platform.

This funding aims to develop and maintain one transdisciplinary research network for scientific collaboration and infrastructure building for innovative home visiting research. The research network will work toward advancing the field of precision home visiting to better understand how home visiting programs impact families.

During the five-year funding period, the awardee will focus on growing the network, advancing innovative research methods, promoting data sharing and partnerships, and mentoring the next generation of early childhood researchers. Find out more information at the Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative’s website.

The goal of the Home Visiting Assessments of Implementation Quality project is to better understand the relationships between home visiting implementation quality, improved service delivery, and improved caregiver and child outcomes. This project builds on the aforementioned home visiting implementation quality conceptual framework, which describes key aspects or quality threads that are thought to guide how home visiting programs are designed and implemented, influencing the quality of home visiting services and positive outcomes, and home visiting implementation quality study designs. Contracted by HRSA, Child Trends and James Bell Associates have engaged MIECHV awardees and subject matter experts to prioritize which implementation quality thread to prioritize and to refine the designs. The project team will implement studies designed to better understand supervision and family voice and leadership and how they impact home visiting quality and outcomes.