Child Trends and Families Forward Virginia are partnering on an evaluation of Virginia’s Comprehensive Health Investment Project (CHIP). Our goal is to increase the evidence base behind CHIP’s promotion of maternal and child health outcomes.
About Virginia’s CHIP
CHIP is a two-generation home visiting program that aims to improve health and economic well-being for women and children living in low-income households (households at or below 200% of the federal poverty level). The program takes a unique approach by pairing families with a team of both parent educators and registered nurses. Parent educators implement the Parents as Teachers curriculum and work with families to strengthen parenting skills, promote children’s school readiness, and support family economic security. Registered nurses promote maternal and infant health by working directly with families, in conjunction with local medical and dental providers, to increase access to and use of health care resources.
CHIP has been serving families for over 30 years and has participated in both internal and external evaluations of the program. Now, CHIP is seeking to further build the evidence base behind the program through additional rigorous research. During this project, Child Trends will evaluate CHIP’s impact on employment and education outcomes using a quasi-experimental study design.
Project activities
This one-year project is being conducted in four phases:
- Phase 1: Identify data sources. Child Trends identified secondary and administrative datasets with similar baseline and outcome measures to those collected through CHIP’s regular data collection processes. We chose a dataset that will allow us to examine associations between participation in CHIP and participants’ education and employment outcomes, using a quasi-experimental design.
- Phase 2: Design study. Child Trends developed an initial study design and analysis plan for using the identified secondary dataset to evaluate CHIP. More specifically, we developed research questions; identified key constructs and variables within the data sources; developed inclusion and exclusion criteria for the analytic sample, along with an analysis plan overview; and secured exemption with the Child Trends Institutional Review Board (IRB).
- Phase 3: Conduct study. We are currently working to conduct the study, which involves developing a data sharing agreement with Families Forward Virginia, merging CHIP data with data from the identified secondary dataset, and cleaning and analyzing data.
- Phase 4: Disseminate learnings. We will develop a summary of findings, suitable for multiple audiences, that Families Forward Virginia can share with stakeholders both within and outside of Virginia.
Project staff
Co-principal investigators: Sarah Crowne and Christina Padilla
Project analyst: Katie Richards