Conducting Outreach

Abstract

Conducting outreach includes case finding and recruitment of individuals, families, and community groups to enroll in and utilize services and benefits; follow-up on health and social service encounters; doing home visiting for multiple purposes such as education, assessment, and social support; and making presentations at local agencies and community events. In this chapter, two teams share stories about community health worker (CHW) outreach, including the importance of building relationships in some foundational CHW work in Louisiana and engaging CHWs and technology to provide more in-depth health education and outreach to promote better health outcomes in a project in rural Georgia. The first team shares how CHWs effected change by developing relationships, conducting outreach in marginalized communities, building the capacity of institutions to truly engage communities, and supporting the next generation of CHWs. They also discuss the replicable strategies that CHWs throughout the country can use to improve outreach and relationship building in their own communities. The second team provides a description of how an innovative outreach program delivered outreach, education, coaching, and technology-based support for managing diabetes through addressing common barriers to self-management in the region, including low health literacy, large distances between homes and healthcare providers, community skepticism of research projects, and difficulty for Spanish speakers to access healthcare.

Authorship is organized alphabetically in ascending order by surname.