Project Summary
The Hello Family Spartanburg County Expansion seeks to address critical early childhood and family development needs across Spartanburg County. Building on the successes of the Hello Family initiative originally launched in the City of Spartanburg in 2021, this project aims to provide comprehensive, evidence-based support services from prenatal care to early childhood, serving approximately 2,500 more births per year.
The award includes:
- $10 million project grant.
- $1.5 million for independent evaluation.
The Hello Family Expansion SIPPRA project anticipates reducing emergency department (ED) visits during the first 12 months after birth among Medicaid participants by 801 visits and 855 privately-insured participants, as well as decreasing hospital overnight stays by 50 percent.
The BirthMatters program pairs community-based doulas with expectant mothers early in pregnancy. Through personalized support, education, and advocacy, doulas address disparities in maternal and infant health among low-income families, ensuring a holistic approach to pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period.
The Family Connects program offers universally available, nurse-led home visits targeting parents of newborns. By providing timely assessments, guidance, and connection to community resources during the critical postnatal period, the program supports infant and parental well-being.
All births within Spartanburg County are eligible to participate in the Hello Family program.
- Enhanced child development
- Improved maternal health and well-being
- Strengthened families and communities
- Reduced stigma around seeking help
| Role | Entity | Responsibilities |
| Local Government | Spartanburg County | Coordinate with the Treasury program team on administration of the program. Also serve as the investor of the program. |
| Intermediary | Institute for Child Success | Lead project design, support operational and contracting, and fund management. |
| Service Providers | Birth Matters, Spartanburg Regional Health Services District | Oversee the administration and implementation of the intervention. |
| Independent Evaluator | Urban Institute | Conduct a rigorous evaluation to estimate the impact and cost effectiveness of the intervention. Provide evaluation progress reports. |
| Investors | Spartanburg Academic Movement | Provide capital to fund services. |
Treasury is scheduled to make five payments annually totaling up to $10,000,000 by 2030 for avoided low-birth weight births and avoided ED visits. The total payout for the low-birth weight outcome will not exceed $3.5 million. Specifically, Treasury will pay $2,108 per avoided Medicaid-paid emergency ED visit, $2,933 per avoided privately-paid ED visit, and $21,754 for each avoided Medicaid-eligible low birth weight birth.
| Service Delivery | $ 10,642,130 |
| Evaluation | $ 1,500,000 |
| Total Project Costs | $ 12,142,130 |
- Project Period of Performance Start Date: February 2026
- Project Period of Performance End Date: December 2030
- Evaluation Start Date: February 2026
- Evaluation End Date: March 2032
This program is eligible to every birth within Spartanburg County. Spartanburg County expects to serve approximately 3,212 births per year.
Using a Quasi-Experimental Design (QED) and Synthetic Control Methodology (SCM), the evaluation aims to measure the impacts of health and educational interventions on a larger scale. Key objectives include the reduction of adverse health outcomes, such as ED visits and low birth weight births.
The choice of a QED, supported by a SCM, is driven by the need for an assessment framework that allows for the control of confounding variables in non-randomized environments, especially given the prospect of bringing to scale models that are offered to all families. SCM allows the evaluator to use existing, comprehensive datasets to create synthetic cohorts that closely match treatment groups on observable characteristics, thereby enabling reliable counterfactual analyses.
The SCM will be used to construct a comparison group from South Carolina counties that have not implemented BirthMatters or Family Connects, creating a donor pool to match Spartanburg. Key predictors—including demographic characteristics and five years of pre-intervention baseline outcomes (2021–2025)—will be measured consistently across Spartanburg and control units, with 2026 as the first intervention year. Quarterly data will be used to account for seasonal fluctuations in birth outcomes and to strengthen the validity of causal inference by improving pre-intervention trend matching. Covariates for low birth weight and ED visit analyses will include detailed maternal and newborn characteristics from birth and vital records, as well as county-level measures such as Medicaid-paid births and child poverty rates from the American Community Survey.
- Healthcare Outcome Metrics: These metrics form the core of the SCM QED evaluation and include the reduction in ED visits and low birth weight births. These metrics not only reflect the direct impacts of maternal and infant health interventions but also indirectly measure the overall effectiveness of the health promotion efforts within the community.
| Entity | Estimated Savings | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Federal government | $11.2 million | This is the federal portion of the reduction to expected Medicaid and Medicare outlays, private pay emergency department visits, and hospital overnight stays. |
| State government | $4.9 million | This is the state portion of the reduction to expected Medicaid outlays, private pay emergency department visits, and hospital overnight stays. |
Further information is available through the official press release and federal register notice. These documents provide detailed background on the SIPPRA award and program expectations.