PEDIATRICS Vol. 84 No. 1 July 1989, pp. 178-180
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Home Visiting: A Necessary but not in Itself Sufficient Program Component for Promoting the Health and Development of Families and Children

ROBERT W. CHAMBERLIN MD, MPH1

1 Dept of Maternal Child Health, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Hanover, NH 03755

The importance of home visiting in the overall strategy for promoting the health and development of children and families is still being debated. In a 1980 conference in which the role of home visiting in delivering preventive services to families with young children was explored, a number of rather heterogeneous programs were examined. There was little agreement concerning why one program appeared to be effective and another did not. Some of the variables thought to be related to positive outcomes were the timing of the intervention (prenatal vs postnatal); intensity (weekly or more vs monthly or less); duration (a year or more vs less than a year); how careful was the selection, training and supervision, and continuing education of the home visitors; content of the intervention (specific educational content and/or emotional support); the overall framework of the intervention (child centered, family centered, ecologic); and the research design and sample size.