Evaluation of Outreach as a Project Element

Abstract

Outreach is a term frequently used to describe active recruitment of program participants and is a common element of many social service and disease prevention programs. Outreach as a project element has received renewed attention with the advent of new federal demonstration projects to serve groups that are difficult to locate, difficult to recruit into services, or difficult to retain within a system of services. The goals of this article are to (a) define outreach, (b) describe the history of outreach as a project element within federal social programs, (c) outline what we perceive as central sources of variation in this element, (d) describe measures of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, and (e) prepare the evaluator for some recurring implementation issues. utreach as a project element has received renewed attention with the advent of new federal demonstration projects to serve groups that are difficult to locate, difficult to recruit into services, or difficult to retain within a system of services. Three current federal demonstration initiatives are notable for their emphasis on outreach. (a) The federal Office of Substance Abuse Prevention (OSAP) funds demonstrations to identify and provide services to pregnant and postpartum substance-abusing women. Recruiting such women into care requires great persistence, and achieving drug treatment and prenatal care means that a wide range of other problems must also be addressed (Schuh and Leviton forthcoming). (b) Through its National AIDS Demonstration Research (NADR) program, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funds demonstrations to educate injection drug users (IDUs) and sexual partners of IDUs about how to prevent human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection (Brown 1989;Froner and Rowniak 1989).

Promoting early detection of psychosis: the role of community outreach

“…Community outreach has been considered a formal component of programmes since the mid‐1960s (Leviton and Schuh, 1991). Typically, outreach efforts have been used to increase awareness, reach disenfranchised populations, and recruit participants for specific programmes, services, interventions or research projects.…”

Aspectos Clave en el Desempeño Exitoso de Agentes Comunitarios en Intervenciones de Outreach con Jóvenes Consumidores de Drogas

“…En la literatura se entiende por outreach work una actividad comunitaria que persigue contactar a individuos o grupos pertenecientes a una determinada población objetivo que no son contactados o alcanzados por los servicios existentes o los canales tradicionales (Hartnoll, Rhodes, Jones, Holland & Johnson, 1990;Leviton & Schuh, 1991). Los sujetos que no acceden a centros de tratamiento tradicionales generalmente perciben barreras, se consideran distintos de los usuarios habituales y consideran que los centros carecen de la experiencia e información necesarias para satisfacer sus necesidades (De Civita, Dobkin & Robertson, 2000;Ja & Aoki, 1993;Litt, 2002;McLellan & Meyers, 2004;Sturm & Sherbourne, 2001;"Consensus Panel", 1999).…”

Reaching the Hard to Reach: Lessons Learned from a Statewide Outreach Initiative

“…Getting SNAP applications into the hands of potentially eligible clients was only half the challenge and many clients were simply unable to complete the application on their own. Indeed, much of the outreach literature emphasizes the importance of face-to-face contact to overcome resistance to participating in programs like SNAP and of directly assisting persons in obtaining services (Leviton & Schuh, 1991). In response to this need, we expanded our outreach project to include a direct, one-on-one outreach component and a toll-free hotline.…”