U-M report finds promising results for state pilot program supporting new parents

A Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) pilot program that aimed to improve health outcomes for pregnant parents and their children has shown promising results, enhancing food and financial security and stabilizing housing for families. Results of the "Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies" pilot’s home visitation program, detailed in a new report from the University of Michigan’s (U-M) Youth Policy Lab, highlight the potential to address critical social determinants of health throughout the state.

Robin Jacob, faculty co-director at the Youth Policy Lab and research professor at the U-M Institute for Social Research and U-M's Marsal Family School of Education, says the goal of the program was "to understand whether expanding the services for which Maternal Infant Health Program (MIHP) providers can bill could better help serve families with high levels of need for basic services." While the program is intended to provide at-risk families with additional support, Jacob says expanding on the program could be beneficial to all families.

"All families with new babies need support," Jacob says. "We need to be able to provide these social service agencies with the resources they need to do their jobs, and it’s in our best interest to provide them."

During the program, licensed social workers, registered nurses, and lactation consultants provided home visiting services to pregnant people and infants, and developed care plans for the families to support healthy pregnancy and infant development. Groups in the study were split by families that were "served by home visiting agencies that were able to bill for enhanced services" and families that were served by other agencies that "did not have the opportunity to bill for enhanced services."

Jacob explains that 90% of white families and 87% of Black families who worked with agencies with enhanced billing said that the program fully met their needs, while only 78% of Black families in the control group felt their needs were met. Jacob says these results show it is possible "to eliminate the gap in satisfaction" when it comes to maternal and infant care when agencies have ample access to funding and resources.

"We want all families to be healthier," Jacob says. "To be able to equitably serve all families in a way that they feel good about is really important."

"Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies" has been funded to expand these enhanced services to the full network of over 75 MDHHS MIHP home visiting agencies statewide, according to Jacob. She says expansion of these services is going to be beneficial to all agencies providing MIHP services, particularly those that are not public health- or hospital-affiliated. 

"Public health departments and hospital systems have more resources available to them, while independent agencies have fewer to draw from," Jacob says. "If we want to expand programs across the board, we need these independent agencies to be able to do their work efficiently and have more resources available to them."

The U-M Youth Policy Lab’s entire report can be found here. For more information on "Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies," head to the MDHHS website. 

"The people who are out there doing this work want to do a good job," Jacob says. "My hope is that the main takeaway from these findings is that we need to provide social service agencies with resources and allow them to do their work in a comprehensive way."

Rylee Barnsdale is a Michigan native and longtime Washtenaw County resident. She wants to use her journalistic experience from her time at Eastern Michigan University writing for the Eastern Echo to tell the stories of Washtenaw County residents that need to be heard.

Photo courtesy of MIHP.