This journal issue comprises reports concerning program evaluations of key national home visitation models. No single evaluation can answer all the questions of interest about a program, nor is any evaluation perfect, which means that readers must carefully weigh the intended purpose of the evaluation and the evaluation's strengths and weaknesses before deciding what conclusions can credibly be...

The article describes how service access barriers (language, trust) were addressed at different levels (organization, service provider, community) by involving Family Home Visitors to support Nurse Practitioners in providing preand postnatal services to linguistic minority women in Ontario. The investigators undertook a secondary analysis of 18 semi-structured interviews with health unit inform...

A choice-theoretic model of household decision-making with respect to care-giving time allocations and the use of publicly and privately financed home care services are proposed. Predictions concerning the effect of increased availability of publicly financed home care services on home care utilization, informal care giving, and health status are derived. These predictions are assessed through ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW Home-based pulmonary rehabilitation programs have been proposed as an alternative to hospital-based programs for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We undertook a systematic review of randomized studies on home-based pulmonary rehabilitation in patients with COPD which report health-related quality of life and/or exercise capacity, in order to assess t...

Kimberly Howard and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn examine home visiting, an increasingly popular method for delivering services for families, as a strategy for preventing child abuse and neglect. They focus on early interventions because infants are at greater risk for child abuse and neglect than are older children. In their article, Howard and Brooks-Gunn take a close look at evaluations of nine home-vi...

BACKGROUND Home visiting programs have been developed aimed at improving the health and independent functioning of older people. Also, they intend to reduce hospital and nursing home admission and associated cost. A substantial number of studies have examined the effects of preventive home visiting programs on older people living in the community; the findings have been inconsistent. The object...