The Children’s Data Network (CDN) at the University of Southern California collaborated with Antelope Valley Partners for Health (AVPH) to develop a project that would lead to the probabilistic linkage of home visiting service records to birth, death, and child protective service (CPS) records. The project had two specific aims. The first aim was to assess the feasibility of linking home visiting records from Los Angeles County to other sources of administrative data, and the second was to document how birth, death, and CPS record data could be used to better describe families receiving home visiting services within the context of all births in Antelope Valley and LA County.

This initial data linkage generated valuable information about the quality and completeness of home visiting client records and the CDN’s ability to integrate them with other service records. The results also demonstrated the value of this linked file in conducting within- and between-group analyses to better characterize families receiving home visiting services in terms of their health, sociodemographic, program characteristics, and cross-sector service interactions, and how they related to other families with infants born at the same hospital during the same window, but who did not receive a bedside screen for home visiting services. This feasibility study generated important information that will form a foundation for future linkages that will enhance our understanding of children and families across Los Angeles County.