One Step at a Time: The Benefits of an Incremental Approach to the Integration of Home Visiting and Other Early Childhood Data

Research BriefHealthOct 16 2019

Home visiting is an important component of the early childhood (EC) landscape. However, states often fail to prioritize home visiting data when developing their early childhood integrated data systems (ECIDS). Home visiting represents a range of services, models, and programs, each with different data requirements, so integrating the data can be challenging. Often, home visiting data is disconnected across different models, as well as from other EC data. To address this challenge to data integration, states can take an incremental approach, integrating one aspect of home visiting data at a time, rather than tackling it all at once. The advantages to taking an incremental approach when integrating home visiting data with other EC data include the following:

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  • The process of integrating home visiting data into an ECIDS can be managed more easily when it focuses on one piece at a time, such as a specific model or geographic area.
  • States can treat the incremental integration as a pilot phase, learn from any challenges or policy barriers that arise, and apply that knowledge when scaling up to integrate other home visiting data.
  • Incremental integration allows states to achieve small wins and demonstrate success on data integration. By showing why integrating home visiting data with other EC data is important and worth the investment of time and resources, states can build buy-in from stakeholders.

The purpose of this resource is to provide states with examples of various ways to integrate their home visiting data into their ECIDS over time. This resource will highlight five examples of how states can approach this incremental integration of home visiting data.

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