The Unexpected Power of Simple Outreach
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A quick call or email is sometimes all it takes to kickstart a valuable partnership.
That was the experience of Aileen Gariepy, Principal Investigator for a Weill Cornell Medicine research trial funded by the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Program. When Dr. Gariepy first reached out to Estelle Raboni, Project Director for fellow New York-based TPP grantee New York City Teens Connection (NYCTC) Expansion, her goals were basic: avoid duplicating services in the area and document community assets. In the end, Dr. Gariepy got what she wanted from that conversation—and much more.
Starting in 2015, Dr. Gariepy partnered with English- and Spanish-speaking Black and Hispanic adolescents on a human-centered design project to develop and test “No Baby No (No Bebé No),” a sex-positive, interactive video game that aims to boost birth control use among that population. Now, as a TPP23 Tier 2 Rigorous Impact Evaluation grantee, Weill Cornell is charged with rigorously evaluating the video game with 850 adolescents.
Getting a large-scale study off the ground is no small effort. To make it happen, Dr. Gariepy’s team needs to build local partnerships—partnerships, she learned from talking to Raboni, that NYCTC already has.
During its more than 14 years in existence, NYCTC has worked with hundreds of schools, teen-friendly clinics, youth-serving organizations, and other community partners in the six NYC neighborhoods with the highest teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates. NYCTC’s connections have given Weill Cornell a leg up on important activities, like recruiting implementation partners. Raboni paved the way for Dr. Gariepy’s team to present their study to community leaders in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island. These presentations led to introductions with community organizations that serve the study’s priority population as well as opportunities to establish partnerships for Phase 1 (focus group testing to refine the video game) and Phase 2 (the randomized trial).
If you’re a TPP grantee in the market for new partnerships, take stock of the assets available to you, including other grantees in your area (the RHNTC’s 5Ps Assessment job aid and Creating a TPP Program Partnership Strategy job aid can help). Then, make contact. As Dr. Gariepy’s experience shows, even a simple outreach can open doors.