Field Placement: Perinatal Advisory Council: Leadership, Advocacy and Consultation (PAC/LAC)
Location: Sherman Oaks, CA
Preceptor: Dena Chwan
Student Name: Jami Jackson
Year: 2002

Home Visitation Evaluation and Research Project

The Perinatal Advisory Council: Leadership, Advocacy and Consultation (PAC/LAC) was established in 1979 and is a small, non-profit agency with a central focus on maternal and child health. The agency's mission is to "improve perinatal health outcomes by providing leadership, education, and support to professionals and systems caring for women and their families".

During the summer and fall of 2002, I was a research associate on PAC/LAC's Home Visitation Evaluation and Research Project. The project was a collaboration between Lodestar Management/Research, PAC/LAC, and several other individual sub-contracts. The Los Angeles Proposition 10 Commission funded the project and the goal of the project was to conduct a wide analysis of home visitation as a service delivery model. The results of the project will be used to aid Proposition 10 during their next funding cycle.

In order to achieve the project's goal, there were five main components. First, a literature review and meta analysis were performed in order to gather both national and international data on home visitation services. This literature review will be used when comparing the Los Angeles experience of home-based services to the national and international data. The second component of the project, of which I was responsible, was a county-wide survey that was distributed to 214 agencies providing home visitation services to children zero to five years of age. I was responsible for the coordination and the implementation of the survey. The survey was first administered in June and follow-up continued throughout November. Additionally, I was responsible for the third component of the project, which consisted of utilizing the data from the completed surveys to coordinate and conduct site visits to 30 home visitation agencies. Each site visit lasted anywhere between two and a half to three hours, and I interviewed the program administration staff as well as actual home visitors. The agencies that participated in the site visits included the Proposition 10 grantees as well as some non-grantees. Once the site visit was conducted, I was also responsible for preparing the data for analysis. These duties included writing the site visit reports and aiding in the coding of the data. The fourth component of the project incorporates the literature review, meta analysis, survey data, and site visit data to research and construct case studies. Seven geographic locations were selected for special study, or case study. The purpose of the case studies is to gain a deeper understanding of community-based home visitation through the study of a set of small and diverse targeted geographic areas. Finally, the last component of the project is a generated map of the locations of the home visitation programs. These maps describe the general geographic location of community assets related to home visitation and will be used to gauge the impact and significance of home visitation programs and services within the community context.

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