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Washington State Institute for Public Policy
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Family Connects

Public Health & Prevention: Home- or Family-based
  Literature review updated November 2017.

Family Connects is a manualized postnatal nurse home visiting program that aims to improve infant and maternal health outcomes. Nurses evaluate families through a risk triage process and deliver educational interventions and community resource referrals as needed. Family Connects consists of up to seven telephone or in-home nurse contacts when the infant is between three and twelve weeks old. In the included study, all residential births over an 18-month period in 2009-10 in Durham County, North Carolina, were randomly assigned to a Family Connects or a comparison group.
 
ALL
META-ANALYSIS
CITATIONS

Meta-analysis is a statistical method to combine the results from separate studies on a program, policy, or topic to estimate its effect on an outcome. WSIPP systematically evaluates all credible evaluations we can locate on each topic. The outcomes measured are the program impacts measured in the research literature (for example, impacts on crime or educational attainment). Treatment N represents the total number of individuals or units in the treatment group across the included studies.

An effect size (ES) is a standard metric that summarizes the degree to which a program or policy affects a measured outcome. If the effect size is positive, the outcome increases. If the effect size is negative, the outcome decreases. See Estimating Program Effects Using Effect Sizes for additional information on how we estimate effect sizes.

The effect size may be adjusted from the unadjusted effect size estimated in the meta-analysis. Historically, WSIPP adjusted effect sizes to some programs based on the methodological characteristics of the study. For programs reviewed in 2024 or later, we do not make additional adjustments, and we use the unadjusted effect size whenever we run a benefit-cost analysis.

Research shows the magnitude of effects may change over time. For those effect sizes, we estimate outcome-based adjustments, which we apply between the first time ES is estimated and the second time ES is estimated. More details about these adjustments can be found in our Technical Documentation.

Meta-Analysis of Program Effects
Outcomes measured Primary or secondary participant No. of effect sizes Treatment N Effect sizes (ES) and standard errors (SE) Unadjusted effect size (random effects model)
ES SE Age ES p-value
Substance use
Nonspecified substance use (i.e., alcohol, cannabis, or illicit drugs) that does not rise to the level of "disordered."
 28 Primary 1 260 -0.049 0.116 28 -0.135 0.582
Anxiety disorder
Clinical diagnosis of an anxiety disorder (e.g., general anxiety, panic, social anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder) or symptoms measured on a validated scale.
 28 Primary 1 260 -0.094 0.116 28 -0.261 0.035
Postpartum depression
Clinical diagnosis of depression after giving birth, or symptoms measured on a validated scale.
 28 Primary 1 260 -0.081 0.116 28 -0.225 0.234
Emergency department visits
Whether someone visited the emergency department, or the number of times they visited the emergency department.
1 Secondary 1 260 -0.029 0.087 1 -0.079 0.360

Citations Used in the Meta-Analysis

Dodge, K.A., Goodman, W.B., Murphy, R.A., O’Donnell, K., Sato, J., & Guptill, S. (2014). Implementation and randomized controlled trial evaluation of universal postnatal nurse home visiting. American Journal of Public Health, 104.