Abstract
We evaluated an intervention to increase participant retention and engagement in community practice settings of the Nurse–Family Partnership (NFP), an evidence-based program of nurse home visiting for low-income, first-time parents. Using a quasi-experimental design (6 intervention and 11 control sites that delivered the NFP), we compared intervention and control sites on retention and number of completed home visits during a 10-month period after the intervention was initiated. Nurses at the five intervention sites were guided in tailoring the frequency, duration, and content of the visits to participants’ needs. NFP nurses at the control sites delivered the program as usual. At the intervention sites, participant retention and completed home visits increased from the pre-intervention to intervention periods, while at the control sites, these outcomes decreased from the pre-intervention to intervention periods, leading to a significant intervention–control difference in change in participant retention (hazard ratio, 0.42; p = 0.015) and a 1.4 visit difference in change in completed home visits (p < 0.001, ES = 0.36). We conclude that training nurse home visitors to promote adaptation of program dosage and content to meet families’ needs shows promise as a way to improve participant retention and completed home visits.
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Acknowledgments
This work was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (grant no. 035369) and an institutional NRSA postdoctoral research training program, 5T32 MH015442, Developmental Psychopathology, Psychobiology, and Behavior (DPRG). We thank the nurses who participated in this study and DPRG faculty and postdoctoral fellows for their helpful comments.
Conflict of Interest
None of the authors has a personal financial interest in the Nurse–Family Partnership (NFP), although in various ways, they were employees of the NFP. The Prevention Research Center for Family and Child Health, directed by David Olds at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, has a contract with the Nurse–Family Partnership© to conduct research to improve the NFP program and its implementation. EMI was a postdoctoral fellow at this center; PB, MM, DL, and DLO were employed by this center. MR is the director of the NFP in the state of Oklahoma; JL is a nursing consultant with the NFP national office; and JS, TSB, BS, MM, and MH were nurse supervisors in the NFP sites in which the retention intervention was developed and tested.
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Ingoldsby, E.M., Baca, P., McClatchey, M.W. et al. Quasi-Experimental Pilot Study of Intervention to Increase Participant Retention and Completed Home Visits in the Nurse–Family Partnership. Prev Sci 14, 525–534 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-013-0410-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-013-0410-x