This article summarizes a 30-year program of research that has attempted to improve the health and development of mothers and infants and their future life prospects with prenatal and infancy home visiting by nurses. The program, known today as the Nurse-Family Partnership, is designed for low-income mothers who have had no previous live births. The home visiting nurses have three major goals: to improve the outcomes of pregnancy by helping women improve their prenatal health; to improve the child's health and development by helping parents provide more sensitive and competent care of the child; and to improve parental life-course by helping parents plan future pregnancies, complete their educations, and find work. The paper notes that pregnancy and the early years of the child's life offer an opportune time to prevent a host of adverse maternal and child outcomes that are important in their own right, but that also have significant implications for the development of criminal behavior. Given consistent effects on prenatal health behaviors, parental care of the child, child abuse and neglect, child health and development, maternal life-course, and criminal involvement of the mothers and children, the program is now being offered for public investment throughout the United States, where careful attention is being given to ensuring that the program is being conducted in accordance with the program model tested in the randomized trials. Also noted is the belief that it is important to test this program in randomized controlled trials in these new settings before it is offered for public investment. Additionally, the program also is being adapted, developed, and tested in five countries outside of the United States: the Netherlands, Germany, England, Australia, and Canada, where programmatic adjustments are being made to accommodate different populations served and health and human service contexts. Figures, tables, and references