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Denver, CO - Scotland has announced that it is adopting the Nurse-Family Partnership(C) program. Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon announced the pilot program during a visit to an established project in Harlem, New York, on Friday, April 10, where she met with nurses, clients and the program's founder, Dr. David Olds.

Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) is a voluntary prevention program providing nurse home visitation services to low income, first-time mothers in 28 U.S. states. Nurses begin home visits early in the mother's pregnancy and continue visitation through the child's second year. Nurses provide support, education and counseling on health, behavioral and self-sufficiency issues.

More than 30 years of scientific research on NFP show consistent results in transforming the lives of vulnerable young families. The non-partisan Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy recently provided a summary analysis of widely-implemented home-visitation programs and found that rigorous studies providing the highest level of confidence clearly support the effectiveness of the Nurse-Family Partnership model.

"The Nurse Family Partnership is a scheme we have been committed to introducing in Scotland. The basic idea of dedicated nurses working alongside vulnerable young mums, not just during their pregnancy but also through those first vital years of a child's life is exactly the kind of support I want to see in time across all Scotland," said Secretary Sturgeon. "This is no untested ideal - the evidence is there from the projects already up and running that NFP has helped deliver better prenatal health, increased employment for young mothers, fewer unintended further pregnancies and helped to reduce child neglect in the families involved. It is not without very good reason that President Obama has just announced a major funding commitment to widen the NFP in the U.S."

Scotland will pilot the NFP program in the Lothian region, which includes Edinburgh, beginning in 2010.

"Given the Scottish Government's longstanding commitment to public health nursing, I'm honored that the government is investing in the Nurse Family Partnership as a way to promote the health of vulnerable mothers and children," said David Olds, NFP founder and Director, Prevention Research Center for Family and Child Health, University of Colorado. "We've tested the program for 30 years to ensure that it actually works, so I'm particularly gratified with the government's commitment to conducting the program with fidelity to the model we've tested."

Scotland joins Australia, The Netherlands, Germany, Great Britain and Canada in implementing Nurse-Family Partnership. In the U.S., where the program was developed, Nurse-Family Partnership serves more than 16,000 families in 28 states. It's estimated that every year there are approximately 600,000 eligible first-time mothers in the U.S. that would benefit from the program.

SOURCE: Nurse-Family Partnership