Engaging Community in Prioritizing Outcomes to Improve Family Health in Evidence-Based Nurse Home Visiting: Using a Modified e-Delphi Method

Background Evidence-based home visiting programs are designed to improve maternal child health. Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) is a model evidence-based home visiting program, shown to improve pregnancy outcomes, child development, and economic self-sufficiency for first-time mothers and their families experiencing social and economic adversities, enrolling them early in pregnancy. Recently, NFP has expanded its services to multiparous women (previous live births) and enrolling women past 28 weeks gestation (late registrants) in selected agencies in Florida since 2021.Objective To study the process and impacts of expanding NFP to expanded populations (multiparous and/or late registrants), we convened a diverse Advisory Committee to guide the NFP expansion evaluation in Florida.Methods This study employed a modified e-Delphi method with three rounds of data collection, to engage diverse partners to identify process and impact outcomes for the NFP expansion evaluation.Results Child maltreatment was identified as the highest priority outcome. Process outcomes included program reach, client enrollment, and client engagement, while impact outcomes included maternal physical health, maternal mental health and substance use, birth outcomes, and breastfeeding practices. The Advisory Committee further identified potential data sources to measure these outcomes.Conclusions for Practice Identifying and selecting key process and impact outcomes using a community-engaged process is necessary to ensure equal buy-in from all partners and to inform rigorous program evaluation. This study showed that using methods such as e-Delphi is feasible and effective for achieving thoughtful and rigorous decision-making, even in times of uncertainty like the COVID-19 pandemic.