Maternal, infant and early childhood homevisiting grant program - purpose: alaska miechv will utilize both base and matching miechv funds to improve maternal and child health, early childhood…

The State of Alaska Department of Health received a $2.91M Project Grant award dated September 30, 2025, under the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Grant Program (CFDA 93.870), administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration's Maternal and Child Health Bureau. The award supports delivery of voluntary, evidence-based home visiting services to pregnant women and families with children up to kindergarten entry residing in at-risk communities across Alaska, with particular focus on the Municipality of Anchorage and Matanuska-Susitna Borough. The Alaska MIECHV program delivers coordinated, comprehensive home visiting services through two evidence-based models: the Nurse-Family Partnership, which will continue serving at-risk pregnant individuals and their children, and the Parents as Teachers model, which will be newly implemented to expand service reach and enhance quality. Grant funds and matching contributions will be deployed to improve program reach, increase service quality, and strengthen staff training and workforce capacity.

The award extends through September 29, 2027, and includes specific programmatic objectives centered on maintaining high-quality nurse home visiting services, fully implementing at least one new Parents as Teachers location by September 2026, continuing systematic evaluation to collect program effectiveness data, integrating home visiting services into a comprehensive early childhood service system, and establishing long-term sustainability mechanisms independent of federal funding. These services directly support improved maternal and child health outcomes, early childhood development, prevention of child abuse and neglect, and family economic self-sufficiency for eligible high-risk populations across Alaska.

Maternal, infant and early childhood homevisiting grant program - purpose: alaska miechv will utilize both base and matching miechv funds to improve maternal and child health, early childhood development, and family well-being for pregnant women and parents of children up to kindergarten entry, particularly those in communities at high risk for poor health outcomes. The program will provide coordinated, comprehensive, and voluntary early childhood home visiting services to eligible families across alaska. To further strengthen this initiative, alaska miechv will continue implementing the nurse-family partnership model and will introduce the parents as teachers model to expand and enhance service delivery. Matching funds will be used to improve program reach, increase service quality, and enhance staff training. Goals and objectives: the goals are to provide high-quality and evidence-based home visitation services to miechv eligible families in the proposed services areas, continue an evaluation process to collect additional data for program improvement and effectiveness, integrate home visiting into a comprehensive, high-quality system of services for the early childhood population, and strive for project sustainability. Objectives: 1. To continue to provide high-quality nurse home visiting services to at-risk, pregnant individuals and their children within the municipality of anchorage and matanuska-susitna borough. 2. Goal: by 9/29/2026, the alaska miechv program will fully implement at least one new parents as teacher LIA. 3. Continue the evaluation process of the alaska miechv program to collect additional data to utilize for program improvement and effectiveness. 4. Alaska will continue to integrate home visiting into a comprehensive, high-quality system of services for the early childhood population. 5. Alaska will strive for sustainability of the miechv program, which is not dependent on federal funding and create advocacy for these services. Approach: the alaska miechv program proposes to use two evidence-based models: parents as teachers and nurse-family partnership for all miechv eligible families, meaning all WIC and medicaid eligible families. Service areas include the municipality of anchorage and the matanuska-susitna borough. At least one new service area is to be determined in the spring of 2025, based on a competitive proposal process, and identified community need, in alignment with the alaska 2020 miechv needs assessment. The total service capacity of the current program is 200 families at any given time. There will be an additional 48 slots expected to open with the expansion of a new parents as teachers program. In addition to expansion, the proposed matching funds will be utilized for workforce development and retention.