Project Summary
The Colorado Lab will conduct program design support, descriptive analysis, and pre-post outcomes analyses of Family Connects Colorado, a universal home visiting program that sends a registered nurse to visit birthing parents and newborns approximately 3 weeks after delivery, with additional visits for families with greater needs. Illuminate Colorado and the Colorado Department of Early Childhood (CDEC) will use the evidence to support decisions about program investment and expansion. This project will formalize a theory of change for the program and examine trends in well-baby visits, postpartum checkups, preventable emergency department visits, unplanned hospital admissions, and birthing parent mental health screening. This project lays the groundwork for a future causal impact evaluation. The analysis will use Family Connects Colorado implementation data linked to All Payer Claims Data from the Center for Improving Value in Health Care. The Colorado Lab will compare hospital- and state-level outcome trends before and after program implementation, benchmarking participating hospitals against non-participating hospitals. Major deliverables including a theory of change, progress reports on data linkage and analytic decisions, and a final presentation and slide deck of findings are expected between March 2027 and September 2027.
Steps to Building Evidence
This project begins at Step 1 of Colorado’s Steps to Building Evidence, as no formal theory of change yet exists for Family Connects Colorado, and is anticipated to reach Step 3 upon completion, reflecting the program’s upward spiral of evidence-building. This project lays the groundwork for a causal evaluation.
Actionability
Findings will enhance the best available research evidence on Family Connects Colorado by establishing baseline outcome trends where none currently exist. Results will directly inform Illuminate Colorado and CDEC’s decisions about program investment and expansion, providing the evidence base needed to justify continued or increased funding for a prevention program whose benefits aren’t immediately visible. The theory of change will support continuous program improvement, while the linked analytic dataset and documented decision rules will advance future research by enabling a rigorous causal impact evaluation once sufficient hospitals have implemented the program with fidelity.
Get Involved
For more information about working with the Colorado Lab, see Government Partnerships or Research Partnerships.