Evaluating community outreach efforts: Preliminary results from a national replication study

This session will describe an approach for evaluating outreach and training efforts designed to increase referrals to a clinical research program focusing on psychosis intervention, detection and prevention. The initiative includes five sites from across the country and is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Preliminary findings from the first two years of this evaluation will be discussed. The results will focus in large part on the relationship between outreach efforts and referrals. The regression analyses used to test the relationship between referrals and the various outreach and training activities will be discussed. The session will also include analyses designed to explore differences between outreach participants who do and do not refer to the clinical program. The impact of contextual factors on the delivery of outreach efforts and the rate of referrals across sites will also be presented.

The results from this evaluation may have broad appeal to members of the public health practice community interested in assessing the value and impact of specific community outreach efforts. This presentation will assist practitioners in establishing an evaluation framework and identifying opportunities for measuring outcomes of interest.