SECTION 1.

 The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) According to 2019 statistics, California has a poverty rate of 18.2 percent, among the highest of any state in the country.

(b) Children born into poverty are at higher risk of health and developmental disparities, including, but not limited to, premature birth, infant mortality, crime, domestic violence, developmental delays, dropping out of high school, substance abuse, unemployment, and child abuse and neglect.

(c) Extensive research has shown that evidence-based maternal-infant and early childhood home visiting programs serving pregnant and parenting mothers, prenatally through children turning five years of age, improve maternal and child health, family self-sufficiency, positive parenting practices, child development, and school readiness, and reduce child maltreatment and neglect.

(d) California has recognized the benefits of voluntary, evidence-based maternal-infant and early childhood home visiting programs with the allocation of General Funds to be administered through the California Home Visiting Program and CalWORKs Home Visiting Program. Thousands more families around the state stand to benefit from home visiting, and mechanisms to enhance funding through federal matching dollars.

(e) Of the programs offered, multiple randomized controlled trials of the Nurse-Family Partnership maternal-infant and early childhood home visiting program, which uses highly skilled nurses and begins prenatally, have demonstrated reductions in preterm births, all-cause maternal mortality, smoking during pregnancy, complications of pregnancy, closely spaced subsequent births, childhood injuries resulting in costly emergency department use and hospitalizations, and have improved childhood immunization rates, compliance with well-child visit schedules, lower body mass index rates, and improved family wellbeing, well-being, including increased family self-sufficiency.

(f) Nurse-Family Partnership and other voluntary, evidence-based maternal-infant and early childhood home visiting programs offered in California were recognized in 2020 by the Office of the Surgeon General as primary and secondary prevention strategies to reduce adverse health and child development effects of toxic stress attributable to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and to prevent intergenerational transmission of ACEs. Further, research cited by the Surgeon General affirms “prenatal initiation of home visiting most successfully prevented child abuse, especially when mothers enrolled at or before a gestational age of 24 weeks.”

(g) Data collected by Nurse-Family Partnership indicates indicate over 90 percent of expectant participants who give birth in the program are enrolled in Medi-Cal for pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum coverage.

(h) More than 20 other states have identified Medicaid benefits through which the activities and services delivered by nonphysician medical professionals in the home in the course of evidence-based maternal-infant and early childhood home visits can be consistently and adequately reimbursed.

(i) Lack of inclusion of evidence-based maternal-infant and early childhood home visiting services as covered services for pregnant people, parents, infants, and children within the State Plan disincentivizes Medi-Cal managed care plans from consistently contracting with evidence-based maternal-infant and early childhood home visiting providers for these services.

(j) Inconsistent ability for evidence-based maternal-infant and early childhood home visiting providers to leverage Medi-Cal reimbursement for activities and services delivered through the course of home visit encounters has perpetuated inequitable access of these critical services in ways that are exacerbated in rural and other communities with fewer resources than more densely populated communities.