Children living in poverty suffer a disproportionate number of injuries, are poorly prepared for school and experience nutritional deficits. Likewise, their mothers experience poorer health and are more likely to have future unwanted pregnancies and more likely to be arrested than middle-class and wealthy mothers.

But a series of Cornell studies in the 1970s and '80s showed that a nurse home-visiting program for low-income women pregnant with their first child can alleviate those problems. Since then, the program has been replicated across the nation.

Today, the program serves more than 16,000 families a year in 360 counties across the nation, said David Olds, Ph.D. '76, who spearheaded the project as a doctoral student at Cornell and is now director of the Prevention Research Center for Family and Child Health at the University of Colorado. He delivered the 2009 John Doris Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the Family Life Development Center (FLDC), April 7, describing how the research project became a nationwide program.

Now, he said, there's a chance the program will reach even more low-income families. President Barack Obama has included funding for the Nurse Family Partnership in his budget proposal that is under consideration in Congress.

"There's consistent evidence that we are making a difference across the board," Olds said. "Prenatal health improves, childhood injuries drop, arrests are down for mothers, there's a reduction of families on food stamps."

The first randomized, controlled trial with 400 families in Elmira in the late 1970s showed conclusively that home nurse visits resulted in improved children's health and development and parents' health and self-sufficiency.

College of Human Ecology faculty and staff have collaborated on the research studies from the beginning, including John Eckenrode, professor of human development and director of the FLDC, and research associates Jane Powers, Charles Izzo and Chuck Henderson. They have conducted follow-up studies with Olds of the Elmira mothers and children when the children turned 15, 19 and 27.

"This program of research is one of the best examples we have of how to conduct early intervention research and now use that research to disseminate a program on a wide scale," Eckenrode said.

Olds replicated the Elmira results in Memphis and Denver, and in 1996 his team created a nonprofit organization to help new communities develop the program outside of the research setting. Today, Olds continues to conduct research to improve the model, and he is now testing the program in the Netherlands, Germany, England, Australia and Canada.

"The program works in large part because of the commitment and passion of our nurses," Olds said. "They're out there every day making a difference in the lives of mothers and children."

Sheri Hall is assistant director of communications at the College of Human Ecology.