Early intervention and child health: Evidence from a Dublin-based randomized controlled trial

Orla Doyle, Nick Fitzpatrick, Judy Lovett and Caroline Rawdon
Additional contact information
Nick Fitzpatrick: UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin
Judy Lovett: UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin
Caroline Rawdon: UCD School of Psychology, University College Dublin

No 201505, Working Papers from Geary Institute, University College Dublin

Abstract: This article investigates the impact of an early intervention program, which experimentally modifies the parenting and home environment of disadvantaged families, on child health in the first 3 years of life. We recruited and randomized 233 (115 intervention, 118 control) pregnant women from a socioeconomically disadvantaged community in Dublin, Ireland into an intervention or control group. The treatment includes regular home visits commencing antenatally and an additional parenting course commencing at 2 years. Maternal reports of child health are assessed at 6, 12, 18, 24, and 36 months. Treatment effects are estimated using permutation testing to account for small sample size, inverse probability weighting to account for differential attrition, and the stepdown procedure to account for multiple hypothesis testing. Following adjustment for multiple testing and attrition, we observe a positive and statistically significant main treatment effect for wheezing/asthma. The intervention group are 15.5 percentage points (pp) less likely to require medical attention for wheezing/asthma compared to the control group. Statistically significant individual main effects which do not survive multiple testing and IPW-adjustment are found for general health (10.0 pp), hospitalizations (8.2 pp), immunizations (8.6 pp), chest infections (12.2 pp) and the number of health problems (d = 0.34). Subgroup analysis reveals more statistically significant adjusted treatment effects for boys than girls regarding fewer health problems (d = 0.63), accidents (23.9 pp), and chest infections (22.8 – 37.9 pp). Our results suggest that a community-based home visiting program may have favorable impacts on early health conditions. As child ill health is costly to society due to an increased demand on health resources and long-term productivity losses, identifying effective interventions to counteract inequalities in health is important from a policy perspective.

Keywords: Randomized controlled trial; home visiting; child health; early intervention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C12 C93 I14 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2015-04-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ucd.ie/geary/static/publications/workingpapers/gearywp201505.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Early intervention and child health: Evidence from a Dublin-based randomized controlled trial (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucd:wpaper:201505

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Geary Institute, University College Dublin Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Geary Tech ().