Impact Of Outreach Research Articles

Pharmacist-led trial to assess impact of outreach on homeless people secures government funding

Pharmacist-led trial to assess impact of outreach on homeless people secures government funding

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Retirement Outcomes: Impacts of Outreach

We review select literature on racial and ethnic disparities in retirement outcomes in the United States and the impact of outreach on such outcomes. First, there are significant disparities in retirement outcomes, reflecting a long history of racism and structural barriers. Second, there is comparatively little work on the differential impact of retirement outreach across race and ethnicity. Future work should consider designing interventions that cater to the needs of specific demographic groups, for example, by embracing the fact that Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites acquire retirement information from different sources. Future work should also incorporate behavioral insights, particularly from prior interventions, and innovate on methodologies for data collection, linking, and analysis.

CT-448 Academic Center Outreach to Community Practices Increases Transplant Referrals and Possibly Reduces Racial Disparities

Racial disparities are evident in transplant utilization rates. Outcomes improve for multiple myeloma (MM) with an autologous stem cell transplant (autoSCT) but despite the guidelines, African Americans (AA) receive fewer autoSCT when compared to whites (W). Multiple single-institution studies have confirmed that rates of autoSCT for MM in AA are similar to W when patients are referred for evaluation. Lower referral to a transplant center may contribute to these disparities. Emphasis on physician communication to facilitate an improved referral network represents an intervention to overcome this disparity. We reviewed our center data to assess the impact of outreach on transplant referrals and impact on race. We reviewed transplants (both autoSCT and alloSCT) performed at Augusta University between fiscal years 2015 to 2021. Patients were divided into two cohorts (cohort A: FY2014-17 and cohort B: FY2019-21) based on initiation of physician outreach by our program. FY2018 was used in our analysis for a year of outreach which included visiting practices within catchment area. In addition, two outreach clinics were established in collaboration with large community practice sites. Statistics are descriptive. 389 transplants analyzed included patients age >18 years with 52% males and 45% age ≥ 61 years. Cohort B had a significant increase with 266 vs 123 in cohort A, a 116% increase. There was increased median distance travelled to our center from 15.2 to 52.3 miles. Considering 15 miles as our urban area, >60% of transplants in cohort B were from outside our area. The increase in median distance travelled was found in both autoSCT and alloSCT (15.2 vs 40.3 and 15.2 vs 79.3, respectively). More significantly, cohort B had a 147% increase in AA compared to 96% in W. The distance travelled to our center was higher for W but also increased for AA at 15.4 vs 69.3 and 15.2 vs 34.8 miles, respectively. Of note, review of regional transplant center data suggests the increased volume at our center is not related to redistribution between programs across GA and SC. Our model confirms that academic outreach increases transplant referrals. The increase includes patients of minority thus may be an effective model to reduce healthcare disparities.

Impact of Microfinance on the Social Performance of Local Households: Evidence from the Kassena Nankana East District of Ghana

This study examines the impact of microfinance on the social performance of local households in the Kassena Nankana East District of northern Ghana. The study’s primary objective was to measure the average effect of the common social performance framework’s core indicators (outreach and products and services) on beneficiaries. Because the social performance management framework is an institutional-based evaluation, it is silent on changes in the service users’ lives. This study modified the common social performance management framework to treat outreach and products and services as independent variables, with changes in the lives of service users as the only output or result. We narrowed these indicators to outreach and mobile banking, and under products and services, we concentrated on nonfinancial products and services because, in microfinance, nonfinancial services lack the needed attention. This study employed the propensity score matching (PSM) method to measure the average treatment effect of the independent variables (outreach, mobile banking, and training) by using data from 341 client households. In the absence of a random assignment of treatment conditions, we placed client households who received these three treatments in a treatment group and those who did not receive such treatments in a control group. We further used the PSM method to match observations of households in the treatment group (households who have access to mobile banks, MFI outreach, and training) with those in the control group (households without access to those) by creating the conditions of an experiment where the treatment elements are randomly assigned to avoid any possible bias. The results showed that outreach significantly decreased loan disbursement time. Conversely, outreach was not significant in relation to delayed loan disbursement time. Mobile banking was statistically significant for increased income, business expansion, timely loan disbursement, and high cost of loans. On the contrary, mobile banking was significantly negative in relation to delayed loan disbursement time. Training showed a significant correlation with women’s empowerment, household decision making, and political and community participation. Regarding the impact of training on the use of a loan, the value of loans for consumption was negative, whereas for production it was positive. Despite the general acceptance of the common framework to measure microfinance social performance, there is still little work to prove the relationship between the framework’s output variables and changes in the lives of the service users. This paper is the first to provide empirical evidence on the impact of outreach and training on change variables. The implication of this paper is that nonfinancial services are equally crucial to delivering change for microfinance service users. Therefore, policymakers must find ways to incorporate essential nonfinancial products and services as bundle packages with credit. Additionally, mobile banking has a high potential for addressing challenges with remote outreach and adverse selection, which is a primary obstacle preventing many poor people from accessing credit.

Situating the evidence for impact of outreach strategies: A systematic review for improving access to higher education

Efforts to widen participation into higher education (HE) are having an impact with increasing numbers of diverse students accessing HE. Outreach is a key strategy within widening participation (WP), yet there has been little peer reviewed, published evidence regarding how outreach is identified, situated and understood. This paper addresses this gap, presenting a systematic review of published research examining how the impact of WP outreach is identified and understood in UK research. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist was used to frame the review and empirical studies focusing upon outreach (2005 – 15) were included. Papers excluded were focused on international, part-time students or those not focused upon WP outreach. Twenty-six papers were identified for inclusion and these were analysed thematically. The analysis identified themes of person-centred impact, raising aspirations, and social capital, addressing 'how and why' questions rather than the 'what works' question judged by the impact of outreach on student numbers. Doing so can enable improvements in the design of outreach activities addressing individual experiences alongside structural barriers. Ultimately, this analysis suggests there is insufficient systematic evidence regarding the impact of outreach on the underlying structural factors shaping access to higher education.

Assessing the Impact of Outreach Through Software Citation for Community Software in Geodynamics

The Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics is a community of software users and user-developers who model physical processes in the Earth and planetary interiors. From 2010 to 2018, the community of researchers published upward of 638 peer-reviewed papers in more than 124 venues. We analyzed this corpus of publications to understand the impact of CIG workshops and tutorials, measured through software citation. We automated article analysis using text extraction and tokenization techniques. Patterns in co-mentioned software suggest that usage for some tools cross-cuts many domains, indicating their broad impact. Network analysis of coauthorship and participation in tutorials and hackathons reveal both are effective methods to grow software communities and the importance of developers in bridging research groups and expanding networks. Networks show that workshops broaden the reach of users beyond the developers while hackathons broaden the developer base creating greater collaboration opportunities for hackathon participants.

The Impact of Social Outreach on the Financial Performance of Microfinance Providers in Pakistan

Microfinance, the tool for poverty alleviation had gone through a paradigm shift as a result of the wave of commercialization of microfinance providers. Increased focus to financial goals and the dreaded trade-off from the pursuance of social outreach goals could force microfinance service providers (MFPs) to the mission drift. To solve the entangled puzzle of mutuality between the social outreach and financial performance of MFPs in Pakistan, this study empirically analyses the impact of outreach on financial performance of MFPs in Pakistan by using a sample of 38 MFPs for the period of 1998-2014. Results suggest that there is significant and positive association between depth of outreach and financial performance. The empirical evidence signaled no trade-off between depth of outreach and financial performance. Results showed the achievement of dual mission for MFPs is possible, as the depth of outreach had a significant positive effect on the financial performance of MFPs in the context of Pakistan. Findings remain consistent by using alternative proxies of financial performance. Keywords: Microfinance, Financial Performance, Outreach, Mission drift, Trade-off, Panel data DOI : 10.7176/EJBM/11-31-08 Publication date: November 30 th 2019

Impact of outreach on financial performance of microfinance institutions: a moderated mediation model of productivity, loan portfolio quality, and profit status

Agency theory posits that the profit orientation of firms influences their social and organisational performance. However, due to the extensive heterogeneity of lending organisations operating in the microfinance industry, there is no general agreement in the literature on how profit orientation affects social and organisational outcomes of microfinance institutions (MFIs). In this paper, we contribute to this debate by analysing whether the relationship between outreach and financial performance of MFIs is mediated by their productivity and loan portfolio quality, and, separately, whether this relationship is moderated by their profit orientation. To this end, a partial least squares (PLS) multi-group analysis is applied to a worldwide sample of 435 MFIs. First, we find substantial differences in the business model among non-profit-oriented and profit-oriented lenders, but the findings also reveal that both types of MFIs can increase their outreach while improving their financial outcomes. Essentially, the analysis shows a negative direct effect of outreach on financial performance for non-profit lenders, but we also find that this negative effect is positively mediated via productivity and portfolio quality of non-profit lenders which leads to a positive overall impact of outreach on financial performance. Hence, our findings do not support the mission drift hypothesis popular in the microfinance literature. On the contrary, the results suggest that non-profit-oriented lenders achieving higher levels of productivity and loan portfolio quality can additionally obtain better financial outcomes.

Effectiveness of community outreach HIV prevention programs in Vietnam: a mixed methods evaluation

BackgroundIn 2014, Vietnam was the first Southeast Asian country to commit to achieving the World Health Organization’s 90–90-90 global HIV targets (90% know their HIV status, 90% on sustained treatment, and 90% virally suppressed) by 2020. This pledge represented further confirmation of Vietnam’s efforts to respond to the HIV epidemic, one feature of which has been close collaboration with the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Starting in 2004, PEPFAR supported community outreach programs targeting high-risk populations (people who inject drugs, men who have sex with men, and sex workers). To provide early evidence on program impact, in 2007–2008 we conducted a nationwide evaluation of PEPFAR-supported outreach programs in Vietnam. The evaluation focused on assessing program effect on HIV knowledge, high-risk behaviors, and HIV testing among high-risk populations—results relevant to Vietnam’s push to meet global HIV goals.MethodsWe used a mixed-methods cross-sectional evaluation design. Data collection encompassed a quantitative survey of 2199 individuals, supplemented by 125 in-depth interviews. Participants were members of high-risk populations who reported recent contact with an outreach worker (intervention group) or no recent contact (comparison group). We assessed differences in HIV knowledge, risky behaviors, and HIV testing between groups, and between high-risk populations.ResultsIntervention participants knew significantly more about transmission, prevention, and treatment than comparison participants. We found low levels of injection drug-use-related risk behaviors and little evidence of program impact on such behaviors. In contrast, a significantly smaller proportion of intervention than comparison participants reported risky sexual behaviors generally and within each high-risk population. Intervention participants were also more likely to have undergone HIV testing (76.1% vs. 47.0%, p < 0.0001) and to have received pre-test (78.0% vs. 33.7%, p < 0.0001) and post-test counseling (80.9% vs. 60.5%, p < 0.0001). Interviews supported evidence of high impact of outreach among all high-risk populations.ConclusionsOutreach programs appear to have reduced risky sexual behaviors and increased use of HIV testing services among high-risk populations in Vietnam. These programs can play a key role in reducing gaps in the HIV care cascade, achieving the global 90–90-90 goals, and creating an AIDS-free generation.

The Medi-Cal Incentives to Quit Smoking Project: Impact of Statewide Outreach Through Health Channels

Little is known about how incentives may encourage low income smokers to call for quitline services. This study evaluates the impact of outreach through health channels on California Medicaid (Medi-Cal) quitline caller characteristics, trends, and reach. Longitudinal study. Medi-Cal quitline callers. Statewide outreach was conducted with health providers, Medi-Cal plans (all-household mailings with tracking codes), and public health organizations (March 2012-July 2015). For incentives, Medi-Cal callers could ask for a $20 gift card; in September 2013, callers were offered free nicotine patches. Caller characteristics were compared with chi-square analyses, joinpoint analysis of call trends was performed accounting for Medi-Cal population growth, referral source among Medi-Cal and non-Medi-Cal callers was documented, and the annual percentage of the population reached who called the Helpline was calculated. Analyses were conducted 2016-2018. Total Medi-Cal callers were 92,900, a 70% increase from prior annual averages: 12.4% asked for the financial incentive, 17.3% reported the mailing code, and 73.3% received nicotine patches while offered. Among the two thirds of callers who completed counseling, 15.5% asked for the financial incentive, and 13.6% reported the mailing code. A joinpoint analysis showed call trends increased 23% above expected for the Medi-Cal population growth after mailings to providers and members began, and decreased after outreach ended. Annual reach increased from 2.3% (95% CI=2.1, 2.6) in 2011 to peak at 4.5% (95% CI=3.6, 5.3) in 2014. Among subgroups with higher reach rates, some also had higher rates of asking for the financial incentive (African Americans, American Indian), reporting the tracking code (whites), or both (aged 45-64 years). Medi-Cal callers were more likely than non-Medi-Cal callers to report providers (32.3% vs 23.8%) and plans (19.7% vs 1.4%) as their referral source, and less likely to cite media (20.2% vs 44.4%, p<0.001). Statewide outreach through health channels incentivizing Medi-Cal members increased the utilization and reach of quitline services. This article is part of a supplement entitled Advancing Smoking Cessation in California's Medicaid Population, which is sponsored by the California Department of Public Health.

The near-peer mathematical mentoring cycle: studying the impact of outreach on high school students’ attitudes toward mathematics

ABSTRACTCollege students may be seen as near-peers to high school students and high school students are often able to see themselves in the college students who are but one step ahead. This nearness in maturity and educational level may place college students in a particularly powerful position when it comes to reaching out to high school students to promote higher education in math and science. In this study college students gave dynamic mathematics outreach presentations, MathShows, to minority and low-income high school students in a mid-sized public school district on the U.S. border with Mexico. The study investigated the impacts of this sort of outreach work on high school students’ attitudes towards mathematics using a mathematics attitudes survey. Results, obtained from N = 306 participants, showed statistically significant improvements in almost all components of mathematical attitudes, with less of an effect on the component of self-confidence in doing mathematics. Differences in impacts by specific student subgroups are all discussed.

Sharing the value and impact of outreach: Taking a multifaceted approach to outreach assessment

Although outreach is a common activity in academic libraries, little has been written about strategies for assessing library outreach efforts. Assessing outreach efforts is important in order to measure the success of the outreach activity, identify areas for iterative improvement, and demonstrate the value of the outreach activity to stakeholders. This article is a case study describing the multifaceted strategies employed to assess a major outreach event, Texas A&M University Libraries annual Open House event. It details demonstrating value and programmatic improvement as the articulated goals for outreach assessment as well as the specific strategies used and the insights gleaned from each assessment strategy.

Maths Sparks: Investigating the impact of outreach on pupil’s attitudes towards mathematics

In this article, we examine the impact of participating in a series of mathematics workshops on secondary-school pupils’ attitudes towards mathematics. A six-week program, entitled ‘Maths Sparks’, was run by a team of lecturers and students at a research-intensive university in the Republic of Ireland. The outreach series aimed to promote mathematics to pupils from schools designated as socio-economically disadvantaged (DEIS - Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools), who are less likely to study mathematics at higher level than their non-DEIS counterparts (Smyth et al. 2015). Sixty-two pupils participated in the research and data was generated through pre-post questionnaires based on the Fennema-Sherman (1976) framework of Attitudes to Mathematics. Findings suggest that while male students initially had more positive attitudes towards mathematics, there was a narrowing in this gender gap across several factors on the Fennema-Sherman scale as a result of participation in the programme. The most prominent of these features were: ‘Attitudes towards success in mathematics’ and ‘Motivation towards mathematics’. Findings suggest that the construct and delivery of this Mathematics outreach programme, involving undergraduate students and academic staff, may provide a useful structure in benefitting pupils’ attitudes towards mathematics and encouraging their study of the subject.

Cervical Cancer Screening Knowledge and Behavior among Women Attending an Urban HIV Clinic in Western Kenya.

Cervical cancer is a highly preventable disease that disproportionately affects women in developing countries and women with HIV. As integrated HIV and cervical cancer screening programs in Sub-Saharan Africa mature, we have an opportunity to measure the impact of outreach and education efforts and identify areas for future improvement. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 106 women enrolled in care at an integrated HIV clinic in the Nyanza Province of Kenya 5 years after the start of a cervical cancer screening program. Female clinic attendees who met clinic criteria for cervical cancer screening were asked to complete an oral questionnaire assessing their cervical cancer knowledge, attitudes, and screening history. Ninety-nine percent of women had heard of screening, 70 % felt at risk, and 84 % had been screened. Increased duration of HIV diagnosis was associated with feeling at risk and with a screening history. Nearly half (48 %) of women said they would not get screened if they had to pay for it.

Deciding when to put grandma in the nursing home: measuring inclinations to place persons with dementia.

For caregivers of persons with dementia, estimating when that person should be placed in long-term care is difficult. Health care providers also find it hard to give an exact time as to when the person should be placed. Using data from 197 caregivers working with the Dementia Care Services Project in North Dakota, we show that asking the caregiver about their inclination to place can be equated to asking them for a specific time to place (κ = .616). Using the probability density function of time to place we were able to translate it into inclination. This inclination is easier information for the caregiver to provide and places fewer burdens on the caregiver and patient. It also provides the health care provider with a measure of time to help advise caregivers and recommend interventions and provide service organizations with measures of cost savings to support the impact of outreach and intervention.

The Convergence Between Outreach and Financial Performance in Mediterranean MFIs: A Panel Data Analysis

There is a long-standing debate on the relationship between outreach and financial performance in the microfinance institutions (MFIs). Although previous researches have reported contradictory results, many of these studies suffer from problems of misspecified model and/or restricted data. In this paper, we employ a static panel data analysis to empirically examine the impact of outreach on financial performance for a sample of 16 Mediterranean MFIs over the 2001–2008 period. Our evidence implies, first that the non-governmental organizations commercial viability increases with average loan size. Second, this commercial viability also increases with the number of outstanding loans per women. Finally, neither targeting the poor nor targeting women affect the repayment default.

Measuring the Impact of Outreach and Enrollment Strategies for Public Health Insurance in California

OBJECTIVE AND STUDY SETTING: To evaluate the effectiveness of different approaches to outreach on public health insurance enrollment in 25 California counties with a Children's Health Initiative. Administrative enrollment databases. The use of eight enrollment strategies were identified in each quarter from 2001 to 2007 for each of 25 counties (county quarter). Strategies were categorized as either technology or nontechnology. New enrollments were obtained for Medi-Cal, Healthy Families, and Healthy Kids. Bivariate and multivariate analyses assessed the link between each strategy and new enrollments rates of children. Methods Surveys of key informants determined whether a specific outreach strategy was used in each quarter. These were linked to new enrollments in each county quarter. Between 2001 and 2007, enrollment grew in all three children's health programs. We controlled for the effects of counties, seasons, and county-specific child poverty rates. There was an increase in enrollment rates of 11 percent in periods when technology-based systems were in use compared with when these approaches were inactive. Non-technology-based approaches, including school-linked approaches, yielded a 12 percent increase in new enrollments rates. Deploying seven to eight strategies yielded 54 percent more new enrollments per 10,000 children compared with periods with none of the specific strategies. National health care reform provides new opportunities to expand coverage to millions of Americans. An investment in technology-based enrollment systems will maximize new enrollments, particularly into Medicaid; nontechnological approaches may help identify harder-to-reach populations. Moreover, incorporating several strategies, whether phased in or implemented simultaneously, will enhance enrollments.

Web accessibility: A longitudinal study of college and university home pages in the northwestern United States

Purpose. This article reports on a follow-up assessment to Thompson et al. (Proceedings of The First International Conference on Technology-based Learning with Disability, July 19–20, Dayton, Ohio, USA; 2007. pp 127–136), in which higher education home pages were evaluated over a 5-year period on their accessibility to individuals with disabilities. The purpose of this article is to identify trends in web accessibility and long-term impact of outreach and education.Method. Home pages from 127 higher education institutions in the Northwest were evaluated for accessibility three times over a 6-month period in 2004–2005 (Phase I), and again in 2009 (Phase II). Schools in the study were offered varying degrees of training and/or support on web accessibility during Phase I. Pages were evaluated for accessibility using a set of manual checkpoints developed by the researchers.Results. Over the 5-year period reported in this article, significant positive gains in accessibility were revealed on some measures, but accessibility declined on other measures. The areas of improvement are arguably the more basic, easy-to-implement accessibility features, while the area of decline is keyboard accessibility, which is likely associated with the emergence of dynamic new technologies on web pages. Even on those measures where accessibility is improving, it is still strikingly low. In Phase I of the study, institutions that received extensive training and support were more likely than other institutions to show improved accessibility on the measures where institutions improved overall, but were equally or more likely than others to show a decline on measures where institutions showed an overall decline. In Phase II, there was no significant difference between institutions who had received support earlier in the study, and those who had not.Conclusions. Results suggest that growing numbers of higher education institutions in the Northwest are motivated to add basic accessibility features to their home pages, and that outreach and education may have a positive effect on these measures. However, the results also reveal negative trends in accessibility, and outreach and education may not be strong enough to counter the factors that motivate institutions to deploy inaccessible emerging technologies. Further research is warranted toward identifying the motivational factors that are associated with increased and decreased web accessibility, and much additional work is needed to ensure that higher education web pages are accessible to individuals with disabilities.

Insights into the Interactions between Educational Messages: Looking across Multiple Organizations Addressing Water Issues in Maricopa County, Arizona

The public receives environmental information from a variety of sources. Evaluation of a single program or one organization's effort is incomplete. Through surveys and interviews, we evaluate the cumulative impact of outreach by 20 water-related organizations in Maricopa County, Arizona. Household water conservation is a topic addressed by 18 organizations whereas 2 share information on water policy. Similar foci across organizations may help reinforce messages about water conservation, quality, or drought, but can also lead to gaps in water education. These gaps may decrease the relevance of water information to some audiences. Future research should examine additional ways that interorganizational relationships affect the geography of information opportunities and its relevance to unique populations.

Reduction of State Victim Compensation Disparities in Disadvantaged Crime Victims Through Active Outreach and Assistance: A Randomized Trial

We examined whether providing active outreach and assistance to crime victims as part of comprehensive psychosocial services reduced disparities in access to state compensation funds. We analyzed data from a randomized trial of injured crime victims (N = 541) and compared outcomes from comprehensive psychosocial services with usual community care. We examined the impact of outreach and assistance on disparities in applying for victim compensation by testing for interactions between victim characteristics and treatment condition in logistic regression analyses. Victims receiving comprehensive services were much more likely to apply for victim compensation than were victims receiving usual care. Comprehensive services decreased disparities associated with younger age, lower levels of education, and homelessness. State-level victim compensation funds are available to help individuals recover physically, psychologically, and financially from crime victimization. However, few crime victims apply for victim compensation, and there are particularly low application rates among young, male, ethnic minority, and physical assault victims. Active outreach and assistance can address disparities in access to victim compensation funds for disadvantaged populations and should be offered more widely to victims of violent crime.