As part of fulfilling its mission, the Tribal Home Visiting Program supports initiatives that invest in innovations and approaches that are topics of interest for the program and the field. Grant recipient collaboration is at the core of these initiatives and to date, have included collaboration on Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) and rigorous evaluation.
Multi-Site Implementation Evaluation of Tribal Home Visiting
Although home visiting has a strong evidence base that demonstrates impacts generally, less is known about home visiting model implementation and effectiveness in Indigenous communities. In this report, Indigenous is used to describe people with ancestral and cultural origins in the territories that make up what is now the United States. Tribal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting’s (Tribal MIECHV) emphasis on expanding the evidence base is critical because most home visiting models that meet the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) criteria for evidence of effectiveness were not created or tested with Indigenous families. As part of the larger shift to evidence-based policymaking at the federal level, it is important to better understand program implementation in settings that have not been the focus of effectiveness studies. One aim of the Multisite Implementation Evaluation of Tribal Home Visiting (MUSE) was to examine how Tribal MIECHV programs planned for implementation when evidence of effectiveness for home visiting models was insufficient or absent or lacked relevance for the context.
Continuous Quality Improvement Collaboratives
The Continuous Quality Improvement Collaboratives (CQIC) offered Tribal Home Visiting grant recipients opportunities to share and learn from each other as they implemented CQI strategies and conducted individual rapid cycle Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) projects as part of a larger collaborative with other grant recipients, focused on specific topics — Family Engagement and Early Language & Literacy.