National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases / Centre de collaboration nationale des maladies infectieuses

Knowledge that's contagious!

Tel: 204.943.0051
E-Mail: nccid@icid.com

Outreach with Vulnerable Populations

Outreach is well established as a general population health approach in maternal & child health,
nutrition and infectious disease control, but it is less established as an intervention for reaching
vulnerable populations. Depending on the target audience and the purpose of a program, outreach
can be understood in a variety of ways ranging from broader public education campaigns to programs
focused on delivering a service to a well-defined client population. Having a clear definition of what
outreach means in your particular situation is the first step to effective outreach programming.

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Key Points

• Outreach can be a valuable strategy at the individual level, for preventing sexually transmitted and bloodborne infectious (STBBI) including HIV in vulnerable populations. This is because outreach can deliver services and information to populations that normally would not be aware of or be able to access services due to their life circumstances.
• At a broader level, outreach can promote positive changes in individual behaviours and also in the wider community by shifting “norms”that inform these behaviours.
• The purpose of NCCID’s Outreach Planning Guide was to address gaps in existing knowledge about
how to best plan programs and services for outreach. The Guide provides a high level theoretical and operational framework based on the best available evidence, and consultation with outreach workers and program planners.
• The framework for program planning presented in the Guide is grounded in the principles of harm
reduction, and the theories of behaviour change, and social determinants of health; all of which
contribute to individual health-related behaviours.
• There are 4 steps in the Guide’s outreach program planning framework: 1) assessment, 2)
planning, 3) implementation, and 4) evaluation. The model is centred upon the context within
which the services are delivered and highlights the importance of constantly adapting programming to suit the changing needs of clients. Outreach programming is iterative.
• The final version of the Guide was introduced at a series of workshops, which were attended by
94 individuals representing every province and territory. The purpose of the workshops was to
demonstrate how the Guide could be used in practice, and to obtain feedback on needs for
outreach services that were still outstanding. These needs are in the process of being
addressed by NCCID.