BABIES CANT WAIT--PROGRAM EVALUATION

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DESCRIPTION (Adapted from the Investigator's Abstract): The goal of the project is the evaluate the effectiveness of a community based educational intervention, Babies Can't Wait, in effecting mothers' behaviors and improving infant outcomes when the infants are 18 months old. The home visits focus on activities specific to the age of the infant and needs of the family, including: 1) teaching mothers to interact with and stimulate her infant, with a strong emphasis on verbal stimulation; 2) teach mother about normal infant development; 3) teach parenting skills to mother by the role modeling of the visitor; 4) review childhood safety issues; 5) review immunization schedules and the importance of well child care; and, 6) provide age appropriate books and toys. The intent of the program is to reduce infant mortality and morbidity and improve readiness for school. A case control design that includes 80 infants whose mothers enrolled in Babies Can't Wait and 80 controls, recruited from the same community, matched on maternal education and Medicaid status, and infant gender and age is used. The investigators will assess 1) qualities of parent infant interaction of maternal infant dyads; 2) cognitive and social, language and physical development of infants; and, 3) qualities of the home environment of infants using standardized instruments commonly used in evaluating early intervention programs, NCATS, HOME, ELMS, BINS, along with demographic and anthropomorphic data. Using multivariate analysis, the investigators expect to find that participants in Babies Can't Wait will have better outcomes on these measures than the controls. In addition, beyond the scope the AREA grant the investigators plan to follow both groups of children and assess readiness for school at age 5. The knowledge obtained from the project will provide a base for further early intervention research and for improved programs that can be generalized to other U.S. communities.