Improving the Health and Development of Low-Income Pregnant Women

Impoverished pregnant and parenting women have greater exposure to environmental stress with adverse effects for their own mental and physical health that may have long term consequences for their children's health and development. The mental health consequences of stress are pervasive in low income pregnant women and mothers with almost half screening positive for depressive symptoms and a quarter meeting diagnostic criteria for major or minor depression. While national home visiting models have demonstrated improvement in health, developmental, and parenting outcomes for women willing to participate, they have had less success in reducing depressive symptoms during pre and postnatal periods, and often programs struggle to engage women with unmet mental health needs.

We conducted a community-based, multi-site, randomized, controlled trial that included longitudinal assessment on five occasions during pregnancy and infancy to determine temporal program effects. We used a CC comparison group because Medicaid insured women in Michigan are eligible for home visiting through enhanced prenatal and infant services, and our goal was to determine if there was any advantage to the team approach when compared to community implementation of the state-sponsored home visiting program.

Pregnant women, who telephoned one of five public clinics in Kent County, Michigan, a county that includes urban (Grand Rapids) and rural areas, were contacted and invited to participate in the trial. We enrolled women considered harder to reach with cultural, language, and literacy barriers to participation and with chronic or current medical problems-populations traditionally served by state-sponsored programs. Participation was not dependent on women coming to a research or health facility, participating in prenatal or child health care or the enhanced services, having reliable transportation, consistent phone service, or stable housing.