From Concept to Application: The Impact of a Community-Wide Intervention to Improve the Delivery of Preventive Services to Children

• Published in: Pediatrics (Evanston) 2001-09, Vol.108 (3), p.750-750
• Main Authors: Margolis, Peter A, Stevens, Rachel, Bordley, W. Clayton, Stuart, Jayne, Harlan, Christina, Keyes-Elstein, Lynette, Wisseh, Steve
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Community health services; Evaluation; Maternal health services; Medicine, Preventive; Preventive medicine
• ISSN: 0031-4005

Objective. To improve health outcomes of children, the US Maternal and Child Health Bureau has recommended more effective organization of preventive services within primary care practices and more coordination between practices and community-based agencies. However, applying these recommendations in communities is challenging because they require both more complex systems of care delivery within organizations and more complex interactions between them. To improve the way that preventive health care services are organized and delivered in 1 community, we designed, implemented, and assessed the impact of a health care system-level approach, which involved addressing multiple care delivery processes, at multiple levels in the community, the practice, and the family. Our objective was to improve the processes of preventive services delivery to all children in a defined geographic community, with particular attention to health outcomes for low-income mothers and infants. Design. Observational intervention study in 1 North Carolina county (population 182 000)involving low- income pregnant mothers and their infants, primary care practices, and departments of health and mental health. An interrupted time-series design was used to assess rates of preventive services in office practices before and after the intervention, and a historical cohort design was used to compare maternal and child health outcomes for women enrolled in an intensive home visiting program with women who sought prenatal care during the 9 months before the program's initiation. Outcomes were assessed when the infants reached 12 months of age. Interventions. Our primary objective was to achieve changes in the process of care delivery at the level of the clinical interaction between care providers and patients that would lead to improved health and developmental outcomes for families. We selected interventions that were directed toward major risk factors (eg, poverty, ineffective care systems for preventive care in office practices) and for which there was existing evidence of efficacy. The interventions involved community-, practice-, and family-level strategies to improve processes of care delivery to families and children. The objectives of the community-level intervention were: 1) to achieve policy level changes that would result in changes in resources available at the level of clinical care, 2) to engage multiple practice organizations in the intervention to achieve an effect on most, if not