Other Areas of Interest
Home Visiting Implementation
The Ammerman lab conducts ongoing research into topics in home visiting that go beyond our main research subjects. These include topics such as infant mortality, supporting mothers in breast feeding their infants, identifying and intervening in intimate partner violence, and maternal substance abuse. These efforts are conducted with Every Child Succeeds.
Quality Improvement in Home Visiting
Although improvement science is an integral part of manufacturing and healthcare, its application to prevention is still in its early stages. Through our involvement with Every Child Succeeds, we are investigating opportunities to apply quality improvement to home visitation. We have implemented tools and procedures such as key driver analyses, process maps, trend charts, red-green charts and control charts, and we have helped implement the use of a web-based system that collects data on home visiting in real time (eECS). We are currently conducting ongoing improvement projects to demonstrate the effectiveness of QI approaches in home visiting settings.
Ammerman directs the Every Child Succeeds participation in the Design Options for Home Visiting Evaluation (DOHVE) Team. Established as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the DOHVE Team provides technical assistance to states, tribes, and territories that are expanding their home visiting services as part of The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program (MIECHV), directed by HRSA.
Participation in Other Research
Ammerman is a co-investigator on the Cincinnati Home Injury Prevention (CHIP) Study. The PI on this study is Kieran J. Phelan, MD (Cincinnati Children's). The CHIP Study is an NICHD-funded R01 investigation of the efficacy of an injury prevention enhancement to home visiting.
Ammerman is a co-investigator on the STAT ED study on which the PI is Jacqueline Grupp-Phelan, MD. This CDC-funded study seeks to examine the efficacy of a motivation-enhanced approach to identifying and improving linkage to mental health services in suicidal children and teens who are seen in emergency department settings.
