VALIDITY OF THE MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH-SERVICES BLOCK GRANT AS AN INDICATOR OF STATE INFANT-MORTALITY REDUCTION INITIATIVES

Since state Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant application s represent the most comprehensive source of information about communi ty and state needs assessment, policy development, and program assuran ce for the population of mothers and children, these documents have th e potential to play a central role in state accountability to Congress and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau. To measure the validity of block grant applications as a reporting mechanism, we assesed the sens itivity of the applications from seven states to strategies for reduci ng infant mortality. We used the independent coding of infant mortalit y strategies from the Healthy Futures/Healthy Generations Program inte nsive evaluation as the standard. Overall, the sensitivity of the bloc k grant applications was only 45%. Since the open-ended design of the block grant applications does not appear to reflect the extent of stat e activity in infant mortality reduction, a uniform application should be adopted that will facilitate clear and systematic reporting of sta te activities.