According to Willis (2013), this role was established by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as signed by president Obama in 2010. Its primary goal is to oversee the deliverance of home visiting services, nationally, to families that live in high-risk areas/communities. Therefore, the director has to be evaluating the impacts of mothers’ health on newborns, child school readiness, childhood morbidities, family self-sufficiency and interpersonal violence (Willis, 2013). Since it is a national program, the director is supposed to adhere to legislations that have been enacted to suite particular parts of the country or states. In this regard, those regions of the state/ nation that manifest highest risks, and, therefore, requiring hardest-to- serve approaches, will have to follow models requiring the most fidelity and rigor in administration of the process as proposed by evidence-based researches (Willis, 2013). Therefore, for one to be suitable in this role, he/ she is supposed to have led replica of high quality and fidelity national programs so that he/she can evaluate and ensure quality in the program. Nonetheless, he/she is supposed to have undergone through family and pediatric nurse practice and community health management in large health care systems (Nurse- Family Partnership, 2014).
Adirim, T. & Supplee, L. (2013): Overview of the Federal MIECHV Program
According to Adirim and Supplee (2013), noting that $ 1.5 billion as investments were injected in the program, to cater for four years, the director of the MIECHV has an extensive project. If successfully implemented, the program will see early childhood systems in the communities, states and the whole nation being integrated. Although he/she is supposed to oversee that, most findings are being made by states and territories, legislation have guaranteed certain sums of money for tribal and ethnic organizations. In this regard, too, legislations have specified eight domains based on measures of evidence-based practice researches that should be treated differently. The models presented must have an impact on at least each of the domain as put forward by the legislations. The director will have to ensure that they work in collaboration and relatedness, so that social, physiological, psychological, family status, economic factors and other matters that affect a child’s health, and hence development are solved.
Spielberger et al. (2012): Building a Supportive System for Evidence-Based MIECHV Program
Since it is expected that the director will be required to oversee the coordination and relatedness of various models in the program, the researchers sought to examine how effective state infrastructures were, in using evidence-based practices (Spielberger, Gitlow, Winje, Harden, Dadisman, & Banman, 2012). Moreover, they examined effectiveness of various community partnerships and the fidelity and quality of the program. In their findings, they noted that the director would have the task of ensuring that training infrastructure is enhanced for most obvious impacts (Spielberger et al., 2012). They also noted that evidence-based approaches in the program enhanced the way the programs were being run in the State of Illinois. Nonetheless, monitoring and partnerships built strong infrastructures on which the state could rely. The director will also have to ensure that, various partnerships and foundations are funded so that models can be implemented; it has been observed that the program services were sharply reduced due to budget cuts regarding it, during the year 2012(Spielberger et al., 2012).
Expert Opinion: Kilburn (2014), on Successful Implementation of Evidence-Based MIECHV
It is evident that the models developed in this program are intended to serve families with different needs. Therefore, the director will have to institute contextualized home visiting for those needs to be met with effective measures. Kilburn also proposes that rather than her emphasizing on features that each model should espouse, a lot of concerns should be directed to fidelity to the models themselves. Apart from ensuring that the visiting staffs concentrate only on improving the family and child outcomes, as described in the manuals of the program features, they can also help in saving families from health emergency costs, by shifting them to a preventive paradigm from a treatment paradigm. In this regard, apparently, the program has not served large enough a large number of families that can be used to determine an average population improvement. Moreover, the director will have to convince the taxpayers that it is generating returns to the nation, and, therefore, definitive cost-benefit models are needed. The models will enable various stakeholders to monetize the benefits of the program. Otherwise, it is expected that the decisive model for evaluating the MIECHV program will be unveiled soon with the first report on the outcomes being presented to the Congress in 2015. Therefore, being the first nationwide evaluation, the director is supposed to produce good results to instill hope in it.
References
Adirim, T. & Supplee, L. (2013).Overview of the federal home visiting program. Pediatrics,
132(1), pp. S59-S64.doi: 10.1542/peds.2013-1021C
Kilburn, M.R. (2014). Evidence on Home Visiting and Suggestions for Implementing Evidence-
Based Home Visiting through MIECHV. Rand Corporation. Retrieved on 04 June 2014 from http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/testimonies/CT400/CT407/RAND_CT407.pdf
Nurse- Family Partnership. (2014). Nurse-Family Partnership leadership team Ensuring success
for implementing agencies and communities. Retrieved on 04 June 2014 from http://www.nursefamilypartnership.org/about/executive-staff#sthash.R0rdVMpD.dpuf
Spielberger, J., Gitlow, E., Winje, C., Harden, A., Dadisman, K., & Banman, A. (2012). Building
a System of Support for Evidence-Based Home Visiting Programs in Illinois: Findings from Year 2 of the Strong Foundations Evaluation. Chicago: Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago.
Willis, D.W. (2013). The maternal, infant, and early childhood home visiting program.
Northwest Bulletin, 27(1).
