New Grant Funds Research into Health Care and Social Services Collaboration

The Colorado School of Public Health’s (ColoradoSPH) Department of Health Systems, Management & Policy and the University of Colorado (CU) School of Medicine’s Prevention Research Center for Family & Child Health (PRC), has been awarded a three-year, $500,000 grant under Systems for Action, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to study the alignment of health care and social services with evidence-based nurse-home visiting to enhance maternal and child health. 

The three-year study will examine cross-sector collaboration between health care and social services with Nurse-Family Partnership ® (NFP) – a national evidence-based home-visiting program designed to improve the health and development of first-time, low-income mothers and their babies. The study will measure changes in collaboration over time, explore associations between NFP nurse collaboration with other healthcare and social service providers and program and health measures, and assess the variation in NFP financing mechanisms.

This project will be led by Venice Ng Williams, PhD, MPH (Post-doctoral Researcher at the PRC and ColoradoSPH alumna) and Greg Tung, PhD, MPH (Associate Professor at ColoradoSPH), in collaboration with the Nurse-Family Partnership National Service Office and Jade Woodard, child maltreatment expert and Executive Director of a state-wide nonprofit - Illuminate Colorado. Mandy Allison, MD, MSPH, a practicing Pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado, Co-Director of the PRC, and Associate Professor with CU School of Medicine’s Adult & Child Consortium for Health Outcomes Research and Delivery Science will contribute as co-investigator. David Olds, PhD, Founder of Nurse-Family Partnership, Professor of Pediatrics at CU School of Medicine, and Co-Director of the PRC will serve as an advisor on the study.

An earlier study, soon to be published, led by Dr. Williams shows that the degree to which NFP agencies are structurally integrated with other health care and social service providers and NFP nurse coordination with different provider types is associated with improved program outcomes. According to Dr. Williams, “Care coordination with substance use treatment providers can positively affect client retention and the health of low-income, first-time mothers in NFP, but this coordination is driven by physical integration of space, technology, finances, and other resources.”

“We hope the outcomes of this study will help facilitate better-aligned policies and practices in evidence-based nurse home-visiting that will address social barriers to health, facilitate care coordination, and advance health equity across the United States especially under the current state of events.”

Systems for Action is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that aims to build a “culture of health” by testing new ways of connecting the nation’s fragmented medical, social, and public health systems.

NOTE: Support for this research is provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.