Last week, the National Home Visiting Resource Center (NHVRC), released supplemental data to its 2017 Home Visiting Yearbook, which compiles key data on voluntary home visiting services and opportunities across the country.

The updated resource provides expanded data from over 14 evidence-based home visiting models (up from 7) on where home visiting opportunities are available in states, where gaps are occurring, and how many families and children could benefit from access to home visiting services.

Supplement highlights include:

  • More than 300,000 families received evidence based home visiting services in 2016 over the course of more than 3.8 million home visits.
  • About 18 million pregnant women and families (including more than 23 million children) could benefit from home visiting but were not being reached in 2016.
  • Evidence-based home visiting was implemented in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, 5 territories, 24 tribal communities, and 47 percent of U.S. counties in 2016.
  • From 2010 to 2017, the federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV) strengthened home visiting by supporting services, research, and local infrastructure. In 2016, MIECHV helped fund services for 83,841 families in states, territories, and tribal organizations—a portion of the total families served by home visiting that year. MIECHV expired in September 2017 and, as of press time, had not been reauthorized.
  • States supported home visiting by combining funds from tobacco settlements and taxes, lotteries, and budget line items in 2016. With limited resources, states are continually working to expand the reach of home visiting to serve as many families as they can in ways that make sense at the local level.

This new resource and data help tell the story and power of evidence-based, voluntary home visiting programs. As Congress continues negotiations of its legislative agenda, it is our hope that MIECHV will be reauthorized soon, before programs are cut and families miss out on these life-changing services.

Check out the new resource from the National Home Visiting Resource Center here.