Long-term Effects of Prenatal and Infancy Nurse Home Visitation on the Life Course of Youths: 19-Year Follow-up of a Randomized Trial.
Eckenrode, John PhD; Campa, Mary PhD; Luckey, Dennis W. PhD; Henderson, Charles R. Jr MA; Cole, Robert PhD; Kitzman, Harriet RN, PhD; Anson, Elizabeth MS; Sidora-Arcoleo, Kimberly MPH, PhD; Powers, Jane PhD; Olds, David PhD
[Article]
Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
164(1):9-15, January 2010.
(Format: HTML, PDF)
Objective: To examine the effect of prenatal and infancy nurse home visitation on the life course development of 19-year-old youths whose mothers participated in the program.
Design: Randomized trial.
Setting: Semirural community in New York.
Participants: Three hundred ten youths from the 400 families enrolled in the Elmira Nurse-Family Partnership program.
Intervention: Families received a mean of 9 home visits (range, 0-16) during pregnancy and 23 (range, 0-59) from birth through the child's second birthday.
Main Outcome Measures: Youth self-reports of educational achievement, reproductive behaviors, welfare use, and criminal involvement.
Results: Relative to the comparison group, girls in the pregnancy and infancy nurse-visited group were less likely to have been arrested (10% vs 30%; relative risk [RR], 0.33; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.13-0.82) and convicted (4% vs 20%; 0.20; 0.05-0.85) and had fewer lifetime arrests (mean: 0.10 vs 0.54; incidence RR [IRR], 0.18; 95% CI, 0.06-0.54) and convictions (0.04 vs 0.37; 0.11; 0.02-0.51). Nurse-visited girls born to unmarried and low-income mothers had fewer children (11% vs 30%; RR, 0.35; 95% CI, 0.12-1.02) and less Medicaid use (18% vs 45%; 0.40; 0.18-0.87) than their comparison group counterparts.
Conclusions: Prenatal and infancy home visitation reduced the proportion of girls entering the criminal justice system. For girls born to high-risk mothers, there were additional positive program effects consistent with results from earlier phases of this trial. There were few program effects for boys.
Trial Registration: clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00443638
Copyright 2010 by the American Medical Association. All Rights Reserved. Applicable FARS/DFARS Restrictions Apply to Government Use. American Medical Association, 515 N. State St, Chicago, IL 60610.