Nurseweek/Healthweek | Home visits by nurses improve the health of lower-income women and children

Home visits by nurses improve the health of lower-income women and children

posted 9-10-97

Poor women who receive nurse home visits during pregnancy and the early years of their children’s lives are less likely to use welfare, be arrested, or abuse their children, according to two recent studies.

The studies, published in the Aug. 27 Journal of the American Medical Association, were conducted in rural Elmira, New York, and urban Memphis, Tennessee. The Elmira study looked at how women and their first-born children fared 15 years after they participated in a nurse home visit program. About 400 women, mostly unmarried and low-income, and all pregnant with their first babies, participated in the study. Half the women received about nine nurse home visits during pregnancy and 23 during the child’s first two years.

The visiting nurses discussed nutrition, prenatal care, developmental stages and needs of children, and other issues that could affect the well-being of the mother and child. The women who received visits were compared with a control group of mothers who did not.

Researchers knew from earlier analyses of the project that the home visits resulted in fewer and less closely spaced pregnancies, less child abuse and neglect, fewer emergency room visits, and more mothers working during the child’s first four years of life, said John Eckenrode, professor of human development at Cornell University and co-author of the study. The findings after 15 years show "enduring and positive" effects, he said, including less dependence on welfare, less drug and alcohol abuse, and fewer arrests.

The Memphis, Tennessee, study replicated the research in the Elmira study with a group of 1,100 young women. The Memphis study yielded similar results; the women who received nurse home visits had reduced pregnancy-induced hypertension, fewer injuries among their children, and fewer subsequent pregnancies.

Nurse visitation programs look promising as a way to reduce welfare dependency, and policymakers are looking forward to more results from similar ongoing studies, said Michael Kharfen, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families. Nurses are authority figures who can play a positive role in young mother’s lives and "get them heading in the right direction for their future," Kharfen said.