MIECHV Technical Assistance Resource Center

Challenge

Evidence-based home visiting provides families with greater support during pregnancy and throughout early childhood. While there is ample evidence these services can be effective at improving outcomes, there can be complex challenges with implementation.

EDC builds the capacity of state and territory awardees to effectively implement evidence-based home visiting through the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Technical Assistance Resource Center. Funded by the Health Resources & Services Administration, the MIECHV program supports pregnant people and parents with young children who live in communities that face greater risks and barriers to achieving positive maternal and child health outcomes. Families choose to participate in home visiting programs and partner with health, social service, and child development professionals to set and achieve goals that improve their health and well-being.

Key Activities

The project is carrying out the following activities:

Provide individualized technical assistance (TA) to build the capacity of 56 state and territorial awardees to implement home visiting in high-need communities. This includes specialized TA by programmatic, data, continuous quality improvement (CQI), fiscal, and evaluation TA staff.
Develop user-friendly tools and resources, including webinars, newsletters, podcasts, communities of practice, tip sheets, briefs, and videos, which provide practical, actionable strategies to strengthen administration of the federal MIECHV grant and the implementation of home visiting programs.
Convene a National Coordinating Center to promote the alignment of evaluation designs and measurement strategies across awardees.
Conduct leadership academies to build the proficiency of awardees in areas such as leadership development, change management, and collaboration.
Facilitate a CQI practicum to improve the CQI skills of awardee teams as well as the home visiting program staff.

Impact

Although TA is voluntary, 100 percent of MIECHV awardees have participated in individualized TA.
Evaluation TA specialists support awardees who are participating in coordinated state evaluations and awardees who are evaluating promising approaches.