A National Program of AIDS Care Projects and Their Cross-Cutting Evaluation: The HRSA SPNS Cooperative Agreements

SUMMARY

As more people in the U.S. seek HIV care, the need has grown for demonstrated service models that address comprehensive needs. The Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) Innovative Models of HIV Care Initiative funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) is an effort of 27 projects to jointly establish goals, develop common evaluation methods, and produce comparable and measurable outcomes. The projects have different service models, but share the goals of reducing barriers and improving access to quality HIV care. To evaluate the pooled effects of these models, a modular evaluation design (Huba & Melchior, 1995) was adopted. The use of shared evaluation protocols permits evaluation of the entire initiative, as well as the evaluation of project clusters with similar service delivery models.

KEYWORDS:

• Program evaluation
• HIV/AIDS
• service demonstration projects
• consensus process
• community-based organizations
• comprehensive healthcare models