Supporting the Scale-up of Mothers and Babies

Mothers and Babies (MB) is an evidence-based intervention that has demonstrated efficacy in reducing the onset and worsening of depression among pregnant women and new mothers across a series of randomized controlled trials. Over the last few years, the MB research team at Northwestern University has received ongoing and increasing requests to train early childhood programs—particularly home visiting programs—on the MB intervention. As we have received these training inquiries and conducted numerous trainings across the United States, our team has identified several gaps and opportunities that require fiscal resources. These resources will allow us to: (1) develop new and enhanced training and technical assistance resources that support home visiting programs as they implement and move toward sustainment of MB and (2) expand our capacity to evaluate MB implementation and impact and disseminate results to stakeholders to support effective implementation and sustainment among home visiting programs across the country. As described more fully in our grant application, to achieve the aforementioned project goals, we will focus our programmatic work in the following areas: Developing an “implementation toolkit” that will support service providers across the continuum from initial MB implementation to MB sustainment Enhancing the MB intervention infrastructure Developing and executing a robust evaluation plan that will allow us to assess MB implementation and impact