Injury prevention in the US Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting programme

Many home-based interventions have been demonstrated to reduce unintentional and intentional injuries in young children aged 0-4 years, but an understanding of their inclusion in federally-funded home visiting programmes in the USA is needed.

The study team administered a survey to key informants at each of the 21 home visiting models approved for United States Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program funding being implemented in 2023. Respondents were based across the United States and in other developed countries. The survey collected information about the content used by models to address unintentional injury, parental health/wellbeing, and child abuse/neglect in children aged 0-4 years.

Completed surveys were returned by all respondents (n=21). Most models reported the inclusion of some unintentional injury, parental health/well-being and child abuse/neglect content. While models on average covered four of the five child abuse/neglect topics listed, only five of the nine topics listed for unintentional injury and parental health/well-being were covered. Among the services used by models to address topics, covering content via standardised curriculum and referrals were the most frequent while less than one-quarter of models (n=5) provided families with safety equipment to address unintentional injury. Less than half of the models evaluated outcomes from their injury prevention services, and no models conducted cost-effectiveness evaluations.

Home visiting programmes are a promising way to reduce injuries in children at high risk, but further development and evaluation of their injury prevention content could increase their impact in the USA.