Randomized trial of the healthy families Arizona home visiting program

The purpose of this paper was to examine the effectiveness of home visiting as a means of improving parental, child, and maternal outcomes and preventing child abuse and neglect. A randomized controlled trial was conducted in a large southwestern metropolitan area. One hundred and ninety-five women were randomly assigned to the Healthy Families Arizona experimental or control conditions. Significant results favoring the experimental group in contrast to the control group were found on some measures in each of five domains including violent parenting behavior, parenting attitudes and practices, parenting support, mental health and coping, and maternal outcomes.

Research Highlights
► Home visitation is an increasingly widespread child abuse and neglect prevention strategy.
► This study was a randomized trial of the Healthy Families Arizona program model.
► Differences favored the intervention. Outcomes were found across different domains.