Why North Carolina needs Nurse-Family Partnership
North Carolina faces critical challenges to the health and well-being of first-time mothers and their babies.
- More than 18,000 North Carolinians between the ages of 10 and 19 get pregnant each year – giving the state the 14th highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation. (Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign of North Carolina, 2009)
- More than nine percent of North Carolina’s infants have a low birth weight (below 5.5 lbs.) (Kids Count Data Center, 2009)
- Approximately one in five children live in poverty in North Carolina (Kids Count Data Center, 2009)
Year after year, statistics like these show that North Carolina is struggling to meet the needs of its most vulnerable citizens. With the help of Nurse-Family Partnership, progress is being made.
Nurse-Family Partnership is one of the most rigorously evaluated home visitation programs in the country. The initial data from North Carolina’s programs are promising.
- 89 percent of babies were born full-term and 89 percent were born at a healthy weight (at or above 2,500 grams/5.5 lbs.).
- 44 percent of mothers who entered the program without a diploma/GED have since earned one, and another 26 percent are working toward obtaining one.
- 73 percent of mothers had no subsequent pregnancies at program completion.
In addition to healthy pre- and post-natal health outcomes, independent evaluations show Nurse-Family Partnership can return more than $5 to the community for each dollar invested. As the program continues to grow and more mothers complete the program, we expect to see outcome data from all sites similar to that found in the program’s randomized, controlled trials.
Nurse-Family Partnership in North Carolina
