The Maternal Infant Health Outreach Worker (MIHOW) model is based on systems theory, which views human behavior as the collective impact of multiple interrelated systems. To understand and assist individual program participants, MIHOW considers how participants are affected by families, organizations, societies, and other systems in which they are involved.
Community health workers (called outreach workers) from the local area serve as home visitors. These outreach workers assess all the systems at play in participants’ lives and then strive to strengthen those systems to help participants meet their goals. Outreach workers help bolster participants’ individual systems (immediate social environment), advocate for participants within larger systems, and support participants’ efforts to improve the systems in which they are involved. By training parents in the community to serve as outreach workers, MIHOW aims to generate broader system change.
MIHOW is a community- and strengths-based model focused on community development. It emphasizes that outreach workers and program participants are equal members of the community with a mutual investment in one another. The model links the parenting experiences of community members with community partners and the university that developed the model.