Journal Article

Home Visits With A Registered Nurse Did Not Affect Prenatal Care In A Low-Income Pregnant Population

Martin, Michelle W, Bates, Mary Ann, Baicker, Katherine, Zera, Chloe, Zhou, Ruohua Annetta, McConnell, Margaret, Gourevitch, Rebecca A

2023

Overview

There is an urgent need to improve maternal and neonatal health outcomes and decrease their racial disparities in the US. Prenatal nurse home visiting programs could help achieve this by increasing the use and quality of prenatal care and facilitating healthy behaviors during pregnancy. We conducted a randomized controlled trial of 5,670 Medicaid-eligible pregnant people in South Carolina to evaluate how a nurse home visiting program affected prenatal health care and health outcomes. We compared outcomes between the treatment and control groups and found little evidence of statistically significant differences in the intensity of prenatal care use, receipt of guideline-based prenatal care services, other health care use, or gestational weight gain. Nor did we find treatment effects in subgroup analyses of socially vulnerable participants (46.9 percent of the sample) or non-Hispanic Black participants (52.0 percent of the sample). Compared with the broader Medicaid population, our trial participants had more health and social risk factors, more engagement with prenatal care, and similar pregnancy outcomes. Delivering intensive nurse home visiting programs to the general Medicaid population might not be an efficient method to improve prenatal care for those who need the most support during pregnancy.

• Publisher: The People to People Health Foundation, Inc., Project HOPE
• Subject: American Rescue Plan Act 2021-US / Birth certificates / Births / Childhood / Clinical outcomes / Clinical trials / Domiciliary visits / Funding / Government programs / Health behavior / Health care / Health care policy / Health disparities / Health services / Health status / Health visiting / Healthy habits / Low income groups / Maternal characteristics / Medicaid / Medical personnel / Medical screening / Neonates / Nurses / Pregnancy / Prenatal care / Quality of care / Race factors / Racial differences / Racial inequality / Risk factors / Social factors / Statistical analysis / Subgroups / Weight gain