A team of researchers from the Children’s Health Policy Centre (CHPC) have partnered with the Fraser Health Authority, Population and Public Health, to evaluate their new Enhanced Family Visiting (EFV) Program.

Led by Principal Investigator and CHPC Associate Director Nicole Catherine, the CHPC team aims to understand the experiences of those who took part in the EFV Program.

“The EFV Program was designed by Fraser Health to be more inclusive of diverse children and mothers,” said Catherine. “We now want to engage with mothers and nurses who participated in the program to learn about their experiences.”

EFV is an early prevention program designed to address avoidable childhood adversities. It is modelled on the Nurse-Family Partnership program (NFP), which involves intensive nurse-home visits starting in early pregnancy through to child age two years.

The CHPC team co-led the 10-year randomized controlled trial evaluation of NFP — the BC Healthy Connections Project — showing promising benefits for mothers and children by age two years. These benefits included reduced prenatal substance exposure; improved child mental health and language development, maternal mental health, and income; and reduced intimate partner violence exposure.

But while NFP is designed to reach young, English-speaking, first-time mothers experiencing disadvantage, the EFV Program serves a broader range of families. Those eligible for EFV also include Indigenous families, mothers with more than one child, older mothers, refugees and newcomers.

In collaboration with Fraser Health, the CHPC team will conduct research interviews with select EFV maternal clients to learn about their experiences with the program. The researchers will also survey EFV public health nurses to evaluate the delivery of the program. The survey questions will examine training, service implementation and additional resources needed.

The findings will help inform EFV program refinements to better reach and serve culturally diverse children and mothers who are experiencing disadvantage. Providing early prevention programs like EFV — for children experiencing disadvantage — is more cost-effective than later remediation. “It’s crucial that policymakers invest in effective early prevention programs to ensure that all young Canadians reach their potential,” said Catherine.