The Healthy Homes Initiative (HHI) aims to improve the lives of whānau (family groups) by helping to ensure whānau are living in warm, dry and healthy homes. This five-year evaluation finds the HHI has provided significant positive impact and value for money, with a return on investment of 507% over five years. It recommends continued investment and expansion and that other social programs adopt similar data collection practices to allow for comprehensive outcome evaluation and comparison.

The HHI was established in Auckland in December 2013 as part of the Rheumatic Fever Prevention Programme and was rolled out to the other high-incidence districts in 2015. The initiative initially focused on low-income whānau with children at risk of rheumatic fever. In 2016, the eligibility criteria was expanded to include children aged 0-5 years and pregnant people. Budget 2021 provided additional funding to expand the HHI to the remainder of the country and the national roll-out was completed in early 2023. 

Key findings

1. The program is making a large-scale impact and to date has supported over 200,000 people.
2. Five years after the HHI intervention, participants experienced significant health and social benefits, for example:
   • 18.6% decrease in all-cause hospitalisations per person (or 10,354 averted hospitalisations per year across 186,016 people)
   • a 5% reduction in school absence for illness for children (with 5,309 more days in school per year across 57,626 children) 
   • a slight but persistent increase in wages and less need for benefits for adults.
3. The benefits of the HHI exceed the cost to Health NZ after one year. For every one dollar spent by Health NZ, there was $5.07 in health savings over the following five years
4. The HHI is an excellent example of social investment. For example, since its inception, the HHI has: used multiple sources of data/evidence to understand people’s needs and preferences; informed the design of effective interventions (aligned with these needs); and measured the effectiveness of different approaches to support the case for expansion and further investment.
5. Feedback from whānau supports these findings and the positive and long-lasting improvements in holistic wellbeing following the support from the HHI.
6. The HHI dataset is the country’s largest dataset that is designed and collected by community providers (with over 100,000 people included within it) and successfully linked to the Integrated Data Infrastructure.