A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has identified shortcomings in how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) measures the performance of its Healthy Start program, which aims to reduce infant mortality, improve maternal health outcomes, and address racial and ethnic disparities in the United States.
The GAO found that while HHS collects data on the program’s progress in reducing infant deaths and improving maternal health, it is unclear how reliable this data is. Furthermore, the department has yet to implement plans to analyze the data by race and ethnicity to assess progress on reducing health disparities, a key goal of the program.
Healthy Start, which funded 101 grantees serving nearly 85,000 participants in 2022, provides one-on-one consultations, health education, and connections to medical services. More than half of the participants were Black or African American, highlighting the program’s focus on underserved communities.
The GAO recommended that HHS strengthen its processes for reviewing Healthy Start performance measures and better coordinate with two other HHS programs sharing similar goals. An HHS evaluation of the program’s progress toward all three goals is expected to be completed in 2025.
The findings underscore the ongoing challenges in addressing the United States’ high rates of maternal and infant mortality, particularly among racial and ethnic minorities, and the need for robust data collection and analysis to ensure the effectiveness of targeted interventions like Healthy Start.
See “Maternal and Infant Health:HHS Should Strengthen Processes for Measuring Program Performance” (March 27, 2024)
