MT: Public Health Home Visiting Evaluation and Data Assessment Plan
State: MT

Skill Area: Program Evaluation

Internship summary
The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services is the second largest government agency in Montana, housing public health, Medicaid, child protective services, and social services. The department is made up of 11 divisions, including the Public Health and Safety Division, which includes most of the public health programs and services. The Public Health and Safety Division is divided into 6 bureaus, including the Family and Community Health Bureau (FCHB), which has a staff of 34 and a budget of approximately $21 million. The Bureau is primarily responsible for population-based services for families, pregnant women and women of child-bearing age, infants, children and adolescents. The programs administered in the Bureau include the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant, WIC, Title X (Family Planning), oral health, fetal, infant and child mortality review (FICMR), Children’s Special Health Services, and Public Health Home Visiting. The Maternal and Child Health Epidemiology Unit, which is where the intern will be located, is a technical assistance unit to all of the programs in the Bureau.

Purpose
To assess and develop an evaluation plan for Montana’s Public Health Home Visiting (PHHV) Program.

Goals
Develop a standardized method and plan for evaluating ongoing effectiveness of the PHHV projects in Montana

Objectives
- Develop a plan for evaluating the process and outcomes of the PHHV Program using current PHHV data elements and other sources of pertinent information
- Identify PHHV program factors that contribute to early entrance into prenatal care, low birth weight and prematurity prevention and smoking cessation
- Describe common elements of Public Health Home Visiting Project services among contractors throughout the state and develop a plan to identify and describe the interventions that are the most effective and recommend which should be changed
- Identify and recommend home visiting evidenced-based practices that may positively impact outcome measures
- Summarize the results of the project and prepare recommendations
- Present the results of the project in a visually appealing and easily understood manner to project participants and other stakeholders

Data or analytic tasks and activities involved
Analysis will include review of data collected at the 17 local level PHHV Projects and sent electronically to the state. The PHHV data system is newly implemented, and includes some new data that has not been collected or analyzed by the program before. Activities will include a review of data gathered at the statewide level to assist in describing home visiting services, clients, strategies and activities. Development of an evaluation plan for the PHHV program will include recommendations for process and outcomes measures, an evaluation of data quality and how it can be improved to facilitate program evaluation, and an evaluation of the extent to which the PHHV project is meeting the objectives in the Public Health and Safety Division Strategic Plan and the goals and objectives of the PHHV program and the Family and Community Health Bureau, including the national and state MCHBG performance measures. In addition, the evaluation plan will be intended to help determine which interventions are most effective with the targeted PHHV population. The student will be requested to translate and present the project results so that they are understandable to public health home visiting stakeholders who may not necessarily be familiar with epidemiological methods or terminology.

Required data or analytic skills
Students will ideally have basic analytic abilities and familiarity with at least one statistical software package. SPSS and SAS are the statistical analysis software packages currently used in the Bureau. Experience with Microsoft Access and Excel is helpful.

Begin date
05/01/2010

Housing assistance available?
Craigslist and the local newspaper (Helena Independent Record-http://www.hehenair.com) have been used by past GSIP interns to find housing. The staff of the Family and Community Health Bureau have assisted with assessing and identifying possible housing and would do so again.

Public transportation available?
Helena has limited public transportation, but most of the housing within Helena city limits is within walking or biking distance of the office, or on the routes of the available public transportation.