Evaluation of the Nurse Family Partnership in North Carolina

Abstract

This is the periodic update on the evaluation of the Nurse Family Partnership program in North Carolina focused on the priority health outcomes of women and infants. During this period, we refined our methodology to more precisely estimate the effect of NFP participation on the health of women and children. In this report, we will report the estimated effect of participation on birthweight, gestational age, NICU admission, and breastfeeding initiation. We will also discuss the differential treatment effect of participation by maternal race as well as variation in estimation between statewide, county and hospital level analysis.As previously reported, this study focuses on NFP participants in North Carolina and proximal health outcomes as well as health care costs. This study is limited by its relatively small sample size used to analyze uncommon outcomes, suggesting the ability to detect programmatic effects may be limited. In other words, because of the relatively small sample, a priori we might expect to conclude there is no effect when there truly is