.
Federally-funded HMRE programs are always voluntary. Grantees must build programs that appeal to their local communities and raise awareness about the program to encourage people to enroll. The following stories from two participants in the University of Denver’s MotherWise program explain what initially drew them to the program.
Participants in the MotherWise program share their reasons for joining the program
The sites in STREAMS found it often took more than one strategy to raise awareness about their HMRE program—that is, they used a variety of methods to spread the word. Furthermore, the five chosen grantees needed to meet study enrollment targets to fulfill the requirements for participating in the STREAMS random assignment impact study. This created additional challenges because the study enrollment targets were generally higher than what their programs would have needed to achieve if they were not participating in STREAMS. To meet these targets, grantees relied on the following types of strategies11:

Developing recruitment or referral partners. For MTCI’s HMRE program for youth in high school, the organization partnered with a county health department to identify local schools that might be interested in offering HMRE. For the University of Denver’s MotherWise program, staff sought referrals from a large hospital system and from smaller grassroots organizations and hospital systems.

Hiring staff devoted to recruitment. These staff set aside time to network with partners, develop and implement recruitment strategies, and interact directly with potential clients. For example, TPC’s Empowering Families program hired two-full time employees who focused on recruitment. When filling these positions, program leaders looked for candidates whose personalities, dedication to the organization’s mission, and connection to the community would help them find and recruit clients.

Recruiting through social media.Recruiting through social media</strong>. More than half of the participants in the University of Florida’s ELEVATE program said they learned about the program through social media. Program staff worked with a social media consultant to develop program-specific advertisements that appeared throughout the social media platform, not just on the program’s individual profile page. Social media recruitment made sense for this program because recruitment spanned a large geographic area that would have been difficult for program staff to cover on their own. The other STREAMS sites recruited from a single, more condensed geographic area. Some of them used social media in a more limited way—for example, to share testimonial videos from participants highlighting the program’s services—but not as a main recruitment source.
Stephanie shares The Parenting Center's strategy for recruiting couples into their program
Tip for HMRE providers: The importance of staying flexible and adapting
Recruitment requires regular attention and hard work. For STREAMS, all the evaluation sites used a multi-pronged recruitment strategy. Additionally, the grantees set monthly enrollment benchmarks and regularly monitored the progress towards them. They used this information to regularly assess their current recruitment practices and try new strategies if their initial ones did not work as planned. For example, the University of Denver’s MotherWise program partnered with a local restaurant to host a pancake breakfast when its enrollment data showed that recruitment needed a boost. For FWCA’s Career STREAMS program, the organization initially recruited through the same employment center that housed Career STREAMS. Staff later saw an uptick in enrollment after expanding their recruitment network to include local Job Corps programs and other organizations outside their home center.
Program staff from the University of Denver's MotherWise and The Parenting Center's Empowering Families discuss how they addressed recruitment challenges
In the end, each site found success in its own way, developing a mix of strategies that worked best for its program. For the STREAMS impact study, the sites all succeeded in meeting their enrollment goals, and enrolled a total of more than 5,000 participants. The following chart is a detailed look at these participants and their characteristics. More information on the sites’ specific approach to recruitment can be found in the site-specific implementation reports listed in the “Resources, acknowledgments, and references ” section of this report. The STREAMS evaluation team also produced a research-to-practice brief on the technical assistance the team provided to support the STREAMS sites in recruiting participants.
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