What is a Recruitment Strategy and why is it important to have one?

What is a Recruitment Strategy and why is it important to have one?

Acción Mutua is a capacity building assistance (CBA) program of AIDS Project Los Angeles in collaboration with the César E. Chávez Institute of San Francisco State University Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Our Presenter Ted Duncan, PhD, is a Behavioral Scientist in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the CDC. He works mainly as a technical assistance provider for community-based organizations and health departments. Over the last several years, one of the most common issues he has worked with has been recruitment. Much of the material he will present comes from that experience.

A Road Map for Web Seminar This Web Seminar will cover: • A description of recruitment • Information needed to plan a recruitment strategy • Multiple methods of recruitment • How to plan a recruitment strategy • Case Studies • Some lessons learned about recruitment • Questions and Answers

Recruitment: An Overview • The means by which persons at risk for HIV infection or transmission are brought into an HIV prevention intervention program • Includes locating people at risk, engaging them, and motivating them to participate in an intervention

Recruitment: An Overview • An “effective intervention” alone is not enough to bring about effective HIV prevention. There must also be an effective recruitment strategy. • An effective recruitment strategy is one that brings an adequate number of appropriate high risk persons into an intervention. • An effective recruitment strategy plus an effective intervention equals effective prevention.

Recruitment: An Overview Recruitment can take different forms, depending on: • The intervention • The most appropriate approach for a specific target population • The needs, abilities and resources of the organization engaging in the activity

Core Elements for Recruitment • Use information from multiple sources to describe identifying characteristics of the target population • Develop and deliver appropriate health messages for the population and setting • Recruit for specific services (e.g., counseling, testing, and referral services; PCM; other prevention interventions) • Track completion of referrals to monitor the effectiveness of the referral strategy • Revise strategies , messages, or venues as appropriate

Planning a Recruitment Strategy: A Six Step Approach Agencies developing a recruitment strategy should answer the following questions related to their target populations: • Who is being targeted through the recruitment? • Where is the appropriate place to recruit clients? • When should recruitment be done? • What messages should be delivered during recruitment? • How should the messages be delivered? • Who is the most appropriate person to do recruitment?

Five Methods for Recruitment • Outreach • Inreach • Agency referral • Social marketing • Peer networking

Methods of Recruitment 5. Peer Networking: Members of high risk networks use personal influence to bring other members of their networks into specific intervention services.

Use of Peer Networking • Enlist members of high risk networks as recruiters • Provide recruiters with orientation and coaching • Encourage recruiters to escort client to service or escort service provider to client or refer client to service • Establish mechanism for documenting follow up on referrals • Use of incentives (stipends) may help

Diagnosing Problems in Recruitment Revisit each of the six steps: • Are you reaching high risk people? • Are you in the right place? • Are you there when people are accessible? • Is the right message being delivered? • Are you delivering the message in the right way? • Is the messenger the right person?

Case Study #1 • Problem: 23 year old male outreach worker recruiting for prevention program for IDUs. He was very successful in recruiting through outreach to IDUs under 30 but was unsuccessful in recruiting those over 30 • Cause: They did not feel the OW was old enough to understand their needs. • Solution: The outreach worker established collaborations with other agencies to refer clients over age 30 to his program.

Case Study #2 • Problem: An outreach worker found that young African American gay men in an after hours club would talk to him about testing, but would not test. • Cause: They didn’t want to be seen entering a room in the club where testing took place. • Solution: The outreach worker had them make appointments to come in for a test on another night before “prime time.”

Lessons Learned • Consider all methods before rejecting any. • Choose one or more appropriate recruitment methods when designing a strategy. • Multiple methods often work better than one. • Don’t try to do everything. There is a cost connected with every method.

Lessons Learned • Outreach as a recruitment method may not always be appropriate to recruit HIV+ persons for prevention case management (CRCS). • Assessment of a recruitment strategy should be on-going. If things change, the strategy may have to. • The success of a strategy can be measured by whether it is producing an adequate yield of high risk people who motivated to participate in the intervention.

Lessons Learned • Develop protocols related to recruitment. • Train all appropriate staff in the use of the protocols in conducting recruitment. • Keep the people doing the work involved in the planning. They are one of the best sources of information. • Develop procedures for quality assurance in recruitment activities, including collection of information.

Lessons Learned • Set up outreach logs, referral forms, intake forms to capture the information to determine whether the recruitment strategy is working. • If the forms already exist, review them. • Assure the consistent collection of information.

Lessons Learned • Consider offering incentives for use of prevention services. Be sure the incentives are appropriate. Are they working? • Cash (stipends) may be effective incentives, but present challenges in fiscal control. • Check with funder before using cash incentives.

Lessons Learned • There is no magic or complex science to recruitment. Most of the “best practices” are fairly obvious. • Consistency is the key! • Recruitment involves making evidence based decisions about what may work and then collecting the information to determine whether the strategy is working. • Keep what works; replace what does not.

Conclusion • Recruitment is an art and a science. It calls for creativity, use of experience, experimentation, and making evidence-based decisions. • Most of what has been covered here was learned from people who are doing recruitment. Everything has worked for someone. • Your challenge is to find your own way.

Questions and Answers Click on the “hand” button and type your question or wait to be called on to ask your question over the phone

For more information on this workshop or to learn how to receive CBA services, especially for Recruitment Training contact us at(213) 201-1345orwww.accionmutua.org

What is a Recruitment Strategy and why is it important to have one?