White Papers

Federal Healthy Start Initiative: A National Network for Effective Home Visitation and Family Support Services – August 2010

The federal Healthy Start Initiative has been an integral, though often unrecognized, part of this nation’s health care safety net for 20 years. Federal Healthy Start has built its history and a substantial track record on serving vulnerable communities whose health and health care have been impacted by lack of access and various barriers.  Throughout its history, effective home visitation models have been deployed to achieve positive outcomes for some 524,484 women, children, and families in underserved urban and remote rural America. This impressive and steady growth has been accompanied by a relatively modest investment by the federal government with a return that has been at least as much in savings as was spent – savings resulting from projects moving low weight births to healthy higher weight births and thus avoiding expensive and lengthy hospital stays as well as the costs of continued care throughout the early years of life and possibly beyond.

Fatherood webinar on the third Thursday of the month.

 

We are proud to announce that Congress has passed legislation providing $145 million in funding for the Healthy Start program for Fiscal Year 2026 (October 2025 through September 2026). This critical investment reinforces our nation’s commitment to improving maternal and infant health outcomes in communities that need it most. Learn more here.

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