Inventory of Evidence-Based Practices (EBPs) for Healthy Start Programs

Evidence-based practices include actions, activities, strategies, or approaches that improve the health of women, before, during, and after pregnancy in order to improve birth outcomes and give infants up to age two years a healthy start. Also included in the collection are informational materials and tools that make it easier to implement evidence-based practices. To search by title, use the main search box located at the top of this page.


Safe Homes, Safe Babies: Perinatal Safety Card

Safe Homes, Safe Babies is a safety card for women that perinatal health care providers can distribute to patients. In addition to providing safety resources for women, this tool also functions as a prompt for perinatal health care providers by providing quick phrases to improve discussions with women about the impact of domestic violence on their parenting and children. The safety card outlines questions women may ask themselves about their relationships, birth control use and parenting, while offering supportive messages and referrals to national support services for help.

Topics:

Depression Intimate Partner Violence Risk Assessment

Approaches:

Strengthen Family Resilience

Benchmarks:

Intimate Partner Violence Perinatal Depression Screening

Evidence Rating: III. Expert guidelines—Protocols, standards of practice, or recommendations based on expert consensus.

Effectiveness of Family Planning Methods

This webpage provides basic information on a variety of contraceptive methods, including a link to a poster comparing typical effectiveness of contraceptive methods. The poster can be used to show women and men the range of contraception choices available to them, and which methods work best at preventing pregnancy. The webpage also provides additional resources on contraception for health care providers and consumers.

Topics:

Reproductive Life Planning/Family Planning

Approaches:

Improve Women's Health Promote Quality

Benchmarks:

Reproductive Life Plan

Evidence Rating: I. Evidence-based practices—have been rigorously evaluated and shown to be effective by MCH experts.

National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership

Medical‐legal partnership (MLP) is an approach to health that integrates the work of healthcare, public health, and civil legal aid to more effectively identify, treat, and prevent health‐harming legal needs for patients, clinics, and populations. MLP addresses legal needs in the areas of income supports and insurance; housing and utilities; employment and education; legal status; and personal and family stability. MLP:

  • Trains healthcare, public health, and legal teams to work collaboratively and identify needs upstream;
  • Treats individual patients’ health‐harming social and legal needs with legal care ranging from triage and consultations to legal representation;
  • Transforms clinic practice and institutional policies to better respond to patients’ health‐harming social and legal needs; and
  • Prevents health‐harming legal needs broadly by detecting patterns and improving policies and regulations that have an impact on population health. 

Topics:

Case Management/Care Coordination Insurance Coverage Other Risk Assessment

Approaches:

Achieve Collective Impact Improve Women's Health

Benchmarks:

CAN Implementation Health Insurance

Evidence Rating: II. Promising practices—Innovative practices employed in the field, based on state-of-science knowledge about what works to improve outcomes, and gathering evidence of effectiveness.