LAUSR

BACKGROUND Mil Dias (Thousand Days) is a program for the first thousand days of life, from gestation to two years of age, targeted at highly vulnerable children and/or mothers and pregnant women. The program has been implemented since August 2015 in the municipality of San Miguel, in Argentina. Mil Dias is designed in a comprehensive and intersectoral way. The main form of intervention is through home visits, but other benefits are available depending on the vulnerability criteria by which participants are admitted to the program. Exits of the program occur when the mother and/or child have reversed the deprivation/s of the entrance-criteria. METHODS This paper provides an analysis of the program's primary data between August 2015 and May 2019, with a total of 1111 program participants. First, we perform a statistical analysis of the targeted population of the program. Second, using a logistic regression we study factors associated to the withdrawal from program. Third, using survival analysis, we study the correlates of time to graduation from the program. RESULTS Results suggest that the program is well-targeted, as program participants exhibit higher deprivation levels than those exhibited by beneficiaries of social programs in general in the same municipality. We also find that program participants in situations of most extreme vulnerability are more likely to abandon the program and that successful exits from the program take longer for more complex cases. CONCLUSIONS The Mil Dias - San Miguel program has been a pioneer program for early childhood development in Argentina. It is well targeted and exhibits encouraging results such as children with low weight, families in need of food assistance and adolescent mothers being able to revert entrance criteria sooner. Yet there is room to intensify efforts to retain the poorest poor participants, as intended by the "Leave No One Behind" 2030 commitment.