Recruitment and Engagement in Care to Impact Practice Enhancement (RECIPE) for Sickle Cell Disease

The goal of this observational study is to help us understand more about the best ways to help individuals living with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) get the best care. The main question it aims to answer is: How to find individuals unaffiliated from SCD specialist care use three distinct pathways? Once unaffiliated individuals are found using the pathways, Investigators will employ linkage coordinators (trained staff) to engage these patients in care. Participants will be asked to fill out an assessment survey which will cover areas such as previous and current treatment, clinic and hospital experience, pain, and quality of life. Participants will also be given the option of participation in a 1-hour long interview how they feel about treatment for sickle cell disease including clinic experience, pain, and quality of life?

The goal of RECIPE (Recruitment and Engagement in Care to Impact Practice Enhancement) for Sickle Cell Disease is to find unaffiliated patients with SCD using three distinct pathways (Community, Hospital, Surveillance) engage them in care using linkage coordinators (LCs; a successful method adapted from HIV care), and understand the contextual factors and implementation support needed to ensure these methodologies can be further scaled up at a national level. This study is significant because information about unaffiliated patients with SCD who are not actively engaged in the health system has not been systematically collected and studied in the past. Information comes only from experienced clinicians, community groups, patient advocates, and word of mouth. The lack of data about this population is problematic because current implementation studies focus on the barriers related to affiliated patients, with no known strategies identified to engage unaffiliated patients. No previous studies have evaluated the best methods for locating and then engaging and maintaining unaffiliated patients in specialty SCD care. This study will contribute to the literature by optimizing different pathways for finding unaffiliated patients, as well as providing evidence on what may work best in different clinical care settings and among different patients to address barriers to care in hard-to-reach populations.