Improving the Effectiveness of Two-Generation Home Visit Programs for Families Living in Poverty: The Recipe 4 Success Preventive Intervention

The Institute for Research on Poverty hosts seminars on the UW-Madison campus most Thursdays during the academic year. These presentations are free and open to the public. Room 8417.

media release: Robert Nix, Audrey Rothermel Bascom Professor, Human Development & Family Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison will present this talk as part of the 2025 Spring IRP Seminar Series.

One important way to reduce class- and race-based disparities in children’s developmental outcomes is to ensure that social and educational services for families living in poverty are as effective as possible. The Recipe 4 Success preventive intervention was designed to enhance the value of participating in Early Head Start home visits. The intervention targeted those parent and child factors most likely to be undermined by living in poverty and most predictive of long-tern health and well-being, including parents’ sensitive scaffolding of learning and young children’s self-regulation and healthy eating habits. This presentation will review the community-engaged participatory collaboration involved in the creation of Recipe 4 Success, the two community-based randomized controlled clinical trials assessing its immediate and sustained effects, and current efforts to disseminate the intervention.