Nurse-Family Partnership Brief

March 20, 2006

This brief summarizes the research evaluating the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP). Under the NFP, nurses make home visits to first-time mothers during the last two trimesters of pregnancy and during the first two years of infancy. The nurses provide information and help mothers form plans to achieve their goals. Three blind, randomized treatment-control studies were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the NFP; these studies resulted in thirteen papers measuring the impact of the NFP on mothers and children up to fifteen years after childbirth.

The methodology used to study the NFP has been first-rate. Based on an analysis of all the papers, the findings are classified into four categories. There is no empirical evidence that the NFP has a positive or negative impact on: birthweight of the child, length of gestation, preterm delivery, child's IQ, mother's educational attainment, or the amount of time the mother was employed. There is conflicting empirical evidence about whether the NFP had a positive impact on: the number of future pregnancies, the amount of time the mother spent on welfare, whether the mother got married, and whether the child was abused. There is some empirical evidence that the NFP had a positive impact on: the mother's awareness of pregnancy services, some measures of children's mental ability, and reducing the number of home hazards; for high-risk children and mothers there were some positive NFP impacts on criminality. There is convincing empirical evidence that the NFP reduced: the amount mothers smoked during pregnancy, the number of dangerous ingestions by children, and the number of days children were hospitalized. In general, there is some evidence that the NFP may be especially beneficial for mothers and children with more risk factors.