This month we wrapped up an 18-month quality improvement pilot project to better integrate environmental health and chronic disease information and referrals into our state home visiting programs. A cross-divisional team made up of folks from Women’s & Children’s Health, environmental Health, chronic disease, workforce development, and performance management worked together to standardize and pilot a new Healthy@Home assessment tool, gather input from the home visitors, train the home visitors, and study the data collected.
The results have been promising…. the data has shown: 1) a 27% increase in the knowledge of home visitors regarding chronic disease and environmental health; 2) a 151% increase in the provision of educational materials to families about chronic diseases and environmental health; 3) a 45% increase in referrals for chronic disease and environmental health issues; and 4) 95% of the home visitors in the pilot recommended adapting the new tool and process.
Our next steps are to standardize the improvement through expanding the Healthy@Home assessment to all Health Start sites, and to take a closer look at how it might be best adopted in our High Risk Perinatal Program. Major kudos to the ADHS team members: Toni Means, Cristina Ochoa, Diane Eckles, Tifney Tihey, Anna Alonzo, Mary Ellen Cunningham, Sarah Rumann, Valerie Odeh, and Sheila Sjolander. For more info, check out our Healthy@Home website where you’ll find the new assessment tool, the training module, and the educational materials and resources of various health topics.
