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.
