Outreach Practices Research Articles

The compassionate invisibilization of homelessness: where revanchist and supportive city policies meet

ABSTRACT In this article, I analyze ongoing changes in the field of homelessness governance in Portland, Oregon (USA) to understand the underlying rationale behind current shifts toward a so-called compassionate approach to homelessness. Based on fieldwork carried out in Portland, this paper analyses the increased inclusion of outreach practices in the management of homelessness in both policing and city policies. To gain an understanding of how policies are implemented on the ground, I focus on the management of homeless encampments. This paper then outlines how this rise in homelessness outreach practices is closely related to encampment cleanups and the invisibilization of homeless people through a “compassionate eviction” from public space.

Balancing local justice and spatial justice: Mobile outreach and refused asylum seekers

AbstractThis article sheds light on the dynamics of mobile outreach practices, and is based on a field study of the ambulatory activities of Médecins du Monde around Strasbourg, France. Mobile teams act in a temporality of urgency and in the spatiality of the street. Roaming the city at regular intervals, they provide healthcare and social services to a target population that lives in the space of the street and is thus alienated from the general social and healthcare systems. Like other French cities, Strasbourg has seen an increase in asylum seekers as well as in migrants who have been refused asylum. Here, we examine the combination of the sociological notion of local justice and the geographical notion of spatial justice in the light of these changing populations. This doubled‐pronged approach allows us to more fully explore the interlocking social and spatial issues involved in the inevitably difficult choices and hard decisions inherent in mobile outreach.

Selection of patients for large mailed fecal immunochemical test colorectal cancer screening outreach programs: A systematic review.

Digital health care offers an opportunity to scale and personalize cancer screening programs, such as mailed outreach for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening. However, studies that describe the patient selection strategy and process for CRC screening are limited. Our objective was to evaluate implementation strategies for selecting patients for CRC screening programs in large health care systems. We conducted a systematic review of 30 studies along with key informant surveys and interviews to describe programmatic implementation strategies for selecting patients for CRC screening. PubMed and Embase were searched since inception through December 2018, and hand searches were performed of the retrieved reference lists but none were incorporated (n = 0). No language exclusions were applied. Common criteria for outreach exclusion included: being up-to-date with routine CRC screening (n = 22), comorbidities (n = 20), and personal history (n = 22) or family history of cancer (n = 9). Key informant surveys and interviews were performed (n = 28) to understand data sources and practices for patient outreach selection, and found that 13 studies leveraged electronic medical care records, 10 studies leveraged a population registry (national, municipal, community, health), 4 studies required patient opt-in, and 1 study required primary care provider referral. Broad ranges in fecal immunochemical test completion were observed in community clinic (n = 8, 31.0-59.6%), integrated health system (n = 5, 21.2-82.7%), and national regional CRC screening programs (n = 17, 23.0-64.7%). Six studies used technical codes, and four studies required patient self-reporting from a questionnaire to participate. This systematic review provides health systems with the diverse outreach practices and technical tools to support efforts to automate patient selection for CRC screening outreach.

Revisiting the High John experiment through a contemporary lens

In 1967, the University of Maryland’s School of Library and Information Services created a public library in Prince George’s County, Maryland, named the High John Experiment, to give Librarianship and Information Science students experience serving disadvantaged communities and to discover new methods to better serve these communities. From the creation of High John to the present day, University of Maryland publications and unaffiliated works credit High John as a groundbreaking experiment that propelled interests in diversity and inclusion in public libraries. High John’s creators published a 73 paged report for the United States’ Office of Education, accompanied by published articles, that confirms a violation of ethics toward the community High John served. The community was not involved in the implementation or planning of the library and many of the services and materials the library offered were based on prejudiced assumptions instead of community input or research. Although High John garnered supporters, the validity and ethicality behind High John’s intent and methods were called into question during the experiment. The controversy led to debates within the field that resulted in conversations about Librarianship and Information Science pedagogy and appropriate methods in outreach and community engagement for disadvantaged communities. Now that the passionately fueled debates on High John have ceased, the experiment is a distant memory. Although this experiment led to debates about diversity, inclusion, and equity in information access within the United States, this experiment is relevant to information readers on a global scale. Because Librarianship and Information Science has a history rooted in elitism and oppression worldwide, High John warrants further exposure and examination from a diverse pool of contemporary perspectives. Through the application of modern community outreach and engagement practices, this article builds on a critical historical analysis of the experiment and argues High John failed in its mission and violated the community’s trust that it purported to serve.

An all-female graduate student organization participating in chemistry outreach: a case study characterizing leadership in the community of practice

Outreach initiatives are typically framed as informal learning environments that provide an opportunity to increase the participants’ interest in science. Research on chemistry outreach has primarily focused on designing and implementing demonstrations for outreach. Recent studies indicate student organizations are at the forefront of chemistry outreach, describing their outreach practices and facilitators’ conceptual understanding of demonstrations. Although leadership has been linked to the success of groups and organizations, the leadership structure of student organizations is an understudied aspect of chemistry outreach. Here, we conceptualize student organizations participating in chemistry outreach as a community of practice (CoP) with the goal of expanding the chemistry education community's knowledge of this CoP. Specifically, we aim to characterize leadership styles within the student organization in the context of an outreach event. Using a case study approach, we collected multiple sources of data, including the organization's outreach practices, an assessment of leadership style, observations, and semi-structured interviews. Results indicate leaders of the student organization, particularly those in charge of planning outreach events, displayed behaviors associated with the transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles more frequently than behaviors associated with the transformational leadership style. As a long-term outcome for this study, the results can be used by national organizations to inform the development of new workshops for leadership training, with the purpose of teaching practices to leaders that can bring success to their chapter or local group.

The association between place stayed and self-identification as homeless among unstably housed young adults in seven U.S. cities

ABSTRACT Limited research has explored whether young adults that experience homelessness and housing instability (YAEH) self-identify as homeless. This study uses the Homeless Youth Risk and Resilience Survey (HYRRS) dataset, a seven-city sample of 1426 YAEH, to examine the relationship between the type of place a young adult stayed the night before their interview and whether they self-identified as homeless. While all participants were classified as homeless as aligned with the McKinny-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, about one third (30.66%) did not self-identify as homeless. Logistic regression analyses revealed a statistically significant relationship between the type of place stayed and self-identification as homeless; participants who slept outside the night before the interview were most likely to identify as homeless, followed by participants who stayed in shelters/institutions, then participants who couch surfed. Participants who had spent more total time unstably housed were more likely to identify as homeless, as were participants who identified as cisgender women. Findings from this study may be used to inform outreach and engagement practices among service providers, who may consider building partnerships across service sectors so unstably housed young people may access housing support without self-identifying as homeless.

Exploring participant engagement during an astrophysics virtual reality experience at a science festival

ABSTRACT Virtual reality applications turn abstract concepts into experienceable phenomena and present exciting opportunities to transform science education and public outreach practices. While research has started to look into the affordances of virtual reality (VR) in the formal science education context, the potential of these technologies to enhance public engagement with science is largely unexplored. To improve the way that VR may be used in informal learning and public outreach contexts, the purpose of our study was to undertake evidence-based investigations that shed light onto the relationship between VR and public engagement. Aiming to identify and develop the benefits of VR technologies, we propose a conceptual framework for engagement with VR at a science festival that comprises four aspects of participant activity: immersion, facilitation, collaboration, and visualisation. This framework guided the research design of our exploratory case study of one VR tour at a science festival. Data included visitor surveys, video recordings, VR screen captures, and focus group interviews with outreach and science professionals. Our findings reveal important ways that VR supports visitor engagement at a science festival. More generally, these findings and our framework contribute to the ongoing efforts of engaging the public with science in more diverse informal learning contexts.

“Bringing the plague”: Groundwork for a transformative outreach of psychoanalysis

ABSTRACT The authors lay the groundwork for a theory and technique of transformative outreach of psychoanalysis, a process of group building of a shared emotional experience by way of a discourse on issues of psychoanalytic relevance. The subject of interest is the public conference, where the “outreach session” is defined as a situation built on the basis of a well-defined setting, which allows the unfolding of the informative process to the best effect. Being able to grasp the quality of the experience that one is creating, while respecting individual differences, is a specific analytical capacity. To the audience, being able to feel that someone minds how it may experience being there, in that moment, means being able to experience in person the containing and transformative capacity of psychoanalysis. This frame of mind can be maintained much more easily if the speaker shows up without a written speech: “placing a sheet” between him or herself and the audience shields his or her perceptual-receptive capacity, which is necessary to give space to the waking dream activity. As theoretical background, the recent developments of the Bionian perspective proposed by Ogden and Ferro seem the most suitable to root our proposed ideas for good psychoanalytical outreach practices.

Integrating Research and Outreach for Environmental Justice: African American Land Ownership and Forestry

AbstractIssues with land ownership and engagement in forestry have been intractable problems that have long impeded wealth development among African Americans in the rural South. Over a 6‐year period, an integrated outreach and research program, the Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Program, implemented community‐based projects, built networks among relevant organizations, changed policies, and developed new knowledge to address these critical issues of environmental justice. In this paper, we discuss how anthropological practice was integrated into a program of community‐based projects to create a platform for long‐term change in land ownership, forest management, outreach practice, and policy environments. The results provide an example of how anthropological methods can contribute to social and institutional change by listening and documenting stories and through long‐term engagement with a diverse coalition of researchers, practitioners, landowners, and funders.

Barriers and Facilitators to Implementing Community Outreach Work, and Inter-professional Collaboration with Regional Partners.

Community outreach workers support individuals in accessing the health and community services they require through various forms of proximity approaches. Even though community outreach has been available in the province of Quebec (Canada) for the past 40years, it is still difficult to implement and sustain, especially with families of young children. The aim of this study was to document barriers and facilitators to implementing community outreach practices, and to describe how such workers collaborate with sectoral (e.g. health care) and inter-sectoral (e.g. municipalities, community organizations, schools) partners. We performed a content analysis on 55 scientific and grey literature documents, and transcriptions of 24 individual interviews and 3 focus groups with stakeholders including parents, community outreach workers, health care employees, and inter-sectoral partners. This study reveals four categories of barriers and facilitators to the implementation of community outreach work (i.e. organizational factors, nature of the work and worker-related factors, family-related factors, external factors). With regards to collaboration, community outreach workers deal with various partners. Good inter-professional collaboration is achieved through positive interactions and communication, shared or co-developed activities for the families, co-intervention with families, and strategies to enhance role awareness and inter-sectoral meetings. Results highlighted that many factors interact and can either influence, positively or negatively, the opportunity to implement community outreach work. The collaborative practices identified may help to maximize facilitators and overcome barriers. Advocacy and a better understanding of how to integrate community outreach work within health services while maintaining the workers' flexibility are needed to sustain this practice.

Italian Visual Cultures

ABSTRACT This article explores how ‘Visual Culture Studies’ has emerged since the 1990s as a productively unstable cluster of research concerns and practices, extending beyond the sectorial bounds of traditional visually-oriented disciplines such as art history or architecture. The two areas of screen studies and photography are explored as case studies that demonstrate how Visual Cultures approaches have expanded research horizons and enhanced teaching and outreach practice in Italian Studies. The article highlights aspects of visual production that have been variously dominant or marginalised in Italian Studies to date and explores how the new, interdisciplinary field fosters interconnections and exchanges, opens up discussion of the complexity of cultural production and media, and is enriched by engagement with visual, textual, and media theory.

Our practice of outreach during the Ice Monitoring project in Nunavik: an early-career researcher perspective

Inuit Nunangat, including Nunavik, is seeing an ever-increasing number of research projects. While mainstream approaches to research are colonial in nature and have historically contributed to the oppression of Indigenous peoples, a new paradigm is now emerging from Indigenous recommendations. Researchers are encouraged to collaborate with Inuit or Northern communities, organizations, and governments and to develop communication strategies to keep local populations informed. This paper focuses on outreach activities organized on several occasions throughout the Ice Monitoring project, in which we participated as PhD students. We share details on this periodic outreach program, which included a Facebook page, hosting an information table at the Co-op store, activities with high school classes, and participation in Raglan Mine’s Environmental Forum. We also discuss lessons learned and the transformation of our practice.

Chemistry outreach as a community of practice: investigating the relationship between student-facilitators’ experiences and boundary processes in a student-run organization

Previous work on chemistry outreach has mainly focused on designing and implementing demonstrations for outreach. Recent studies indicate student organizations are at the forefront of chemistry outreach and described their outreach practices and conceptual understanding of demonstrations. However, more research is needed regarding the experiences of facilitators leading outreach events to understand their motivation, what they are gaining from participating, how they are contributing to the community,etc.By providing this information, we can give more structure to outreach initiatives as an informal learning environment. This work is part of a larger study that explores the relationship between leadership in student organizations and chemistry outreach events. Here, we present how diversity plays a role in chemistry outreach, as informed by interviews involving nine graduate students who actively participated in outreach. Communities of practice (CoP) has been used as a framework to describe learning environments and student organizations participating in outreach can be thought of as a CoP. The findings suggest diversity and inclusion influence boundary processes of the student organization as a CoP. Specifically, students’ prior experiences related to gender, race/ethnicity, education and other outreach events play a role in their purpose for doing chemistry outreach, how they contribute to planning of events and how they interact with the audience of outreach events.

Characterizing and Assessing the Quality of State K–12 Share Table Policies as a Potential Mechanism to Reduce Food Waste and Promote Food Security

ObjectiveTo identify the prevalence of state-level share table policies, assess the quality of available policies, and determine common policy characteristics. DesignIn this qualitative policy analysis, state-level share table policies and resources were collected from March to June, 2018 from the State Department of Education Child Nutrition Office Web sites and/or staff communication across 50 states and Washington, DC. Variables MeasuredFrequency of state-level policy documents assessed, as well as the allowable share table items, marketing and outreach guidance, and requirements for health code clearance, critical limits, monitoring, corrective actions, record keeping, redistribution plans, and allergy considerations. AnalysisAfter a deductive analysis approach, each collected policy document was scored on 10 a priori components primarily derived from existing food safety policies. Descriptive statistics were used to present common policy characteristics. ResultsAbout half of the US (n = 27) had a state-level share table policy document. Most states with a policy document (81%; n = 22) allowed unused share table items to be redistributed through reservice, food donation, or use as a cooked ingredient in future meals. Few states provided adequate guidance on monitoring, corrective actions, record keeping, allergy considerations, and best practices for share table marketing and outreach. Conclusions and ImplicationsThe high prevalence of state share table guidance suggests that this is a common food recovery strategy. Yet, states differed in allowable share table items and on permitted future use of share table items.

How outreach facilitates family engagement with universal early childhood health and education services in Tasmania, Australia: An ethnographic study

Tasmanian early childhood services (ECS) are attempting to improve their engagement with vulnerable families and increase the uptake of universal health and education services in this population. This paper presents qualitative findings from the Tassie project, focusing on the scope and role of outreach in supporting family engagement in the Tasmanian ECS. Using an ethnographic study design, over 100 naturalistic observations were recorded in health and education ECS settings in Tasmanian communities between April 2017 and February 2018. In addition, 42 ECS providers and 32 parents/guardians with pre-school aged children participated in semi-structured interviews. Interview transcripts and observation field notes were analysed thematically, focusing on family engagement and the role of outreach across three key universal ECS. Outreach was undertaken by all services involved in this study, but varied in practice and scope. Outreach was not directed at specific population groups, but was instigated in response to an identified need with more vulnerable families to address issues of inequity in service access. Policies and strategic frameworks within services provided little or no guidance about outreach beyond procedures for conducting home visits. Attending specialised services alongside parents, a strategy adopted by one service, was particularly effective for facilitating connection to services for vulnerable families. The capacity of services to offer outreach was constrained by structured service systems, individual providers’ skills and capability, resource limitations and lack of clarity with respect to policies and procedures. Outreach activities are occurring within the universal ECS system in Tasmania, facilitating engagement with vulnerable Tasmanian families and children. Flexible service systems, building the skills and capacities of service providers and clearer policies and procedures would enable services to more fully embed outreach practices within existing ECS.

Development of “Mental Health Outreach Practice Self-Evaluation Scale”: Verication of Reliability and Valibity

Development of “Mental Health Outreach Practice Self-Evaluation Scale”: Verication of Reliability and Valibity

Empowerment and Disempowerment in the Participatory Culture of TransCoding

In this article, I consider implications of outreach practices in the field of contemporary music for the field itself and for the professional artists involved. I am interested in what happens if we facilitate access to contemporary music for audiences of any kind of demographic, break down barriers, share authority between participating non-professionals and professional artists and allow all participants of a project influence on jointly created artworks. I investigate in how far the organisational or structural change in the creative practice and the creative outcome – that comes along with bringing new players into the field – has consequences on the personal practice of the professional actors in such a project. I base my article on theories of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, communication scholar Henry Jenkins, art historian Claire Bishop, musicologist Elena Ungeheuer and my own research into social structures of the contemporary art field, and apply them to a single case study: the artistic research project TransCoding – From ‘Highbrow Art’ to Participatory Culture, funded by the Austrian Science Fund. Using the method of thick description, I take the reader through the history of TransCoding, give account of field experiences and put the found patterns of cultural-social experiences into a theoretical context. I investigate the power shifts from professional artists to audience that occurred on the basis of creative, participatory processes within this project. In doing so, I would like to raise questions and stimulate discussion with regard to the conditions and social organisations of creative practice in the contemporary music field, the distribution of power and how this is felt when ‘bringing new audiences to new music’ into the core practice of professional artists, the actual creation of a new work.

Diaspora diplomacy: Nordic and Baltic perspective

ABSTRACT The aim of the article is to offer a comparative overview of the latest developments in the Baltic and Nordic state diaspora engagement policies and outreach practices, and to further the understanding of the term diaspora diplomacy. In this article, diaspora diplomacy is understood as the use of Foreign Service, or other branches of government, to promote the systematic relationship, for mutual benefit, between the country of origin government, diaspora groupings in countries of residence, and the various interest associations in both the country of origin and country of residence. In addition to reviewing the diaspora outreach initiatives of the eight countries, the article also utilizes interviews with representatives of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the Baltic and Nordic region. The interviews with government representatives offer insight into how diaspora are regarded, if diasporas are thought of as a resource for the home country, and what are the possible future trajectories for diaspora relations.

Restoration Work

There has been a growing commitment across the fields of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Human-Computer Interaction for Development (HCI4D) towards investigating the design and deployment of technologies in the context of complex healthcare ecologies. We present a qualitative inquiry of one such context, as we examine the outreach practices and everyday challenges of workers at a community-based organization in Gujarat (India) that works with People Living with the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus(PLHIV). Drawing on Yosso's framework of community cultural wealth-apt for such intersectional settings-and the lens of articulation work, we describe how the workers at Vikas build and strengthen varied forms of capital to restore "old normals," or what life was like for their PLHIV clients prior to diagnoses. Finally, we propose that attention to this nature of restoration work, and the workers' engagement with diverse forms of community cultural wealth, allows us to reflect on how technologies might (or might not) be designed to impact social and affective aspects of health.

Digging Up the Past: Archival Issues with Found Time Capsules at Illinois State University

During the demolition of an Illinois State University dormitory in the spring of 2016, workers discovered two time capsules. Tasked with their care, the university archivist looked for archival guidance on the safe handling of time capsules, best practices for working with their contents while balancing public demand for access. This case study examines the time capsule as an object of collective memory, how it fits into an institutional collection, the archivist's work to document and recover materials in two recently discovered time capsules, and how to work with multiple institutional departments to make them accessible. It suggests best practices for time capsule discoveries and outreach.