A highly successful home-visit program pioneered in the US is making headway in indigenous communities here, writes Linda Belardi

Aver the past 30 years, a nurse-led home visiting program implemented in the US has seen dramatic changes in infant mortality, school attendance and youth incarceration. Rates of child abuse and neglect in targeted communities have dropped by 50 per cent and by age 19, criminal arrests fell by more than 40 per cent. But even more significant than the sheer scale of the long-term effects on communities is the fact that these results can be replicated. Three large randomised clinical trials of the nursing intervention conducted over 30 years have demonstrated a pattern of "sizeable and...