The Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC) is pleased to announce the fifth annual Collaborative Science of Home Visiting meeting on Wednesday, January 29th, 2020 at the Grand Hyatt Washington. The meeting will be held from 8am-2pm, immediately preceding the National Home Visiting Summit.
The HARC Meeting is an interactive opportunity for HARC members to learn about innovative methods to promote precision home visiting.
The meeting agenda includes panel presentations by HARC members who use innovative research methods to study precision home visiting, workshops by HARC Team members, updates on current HARC activities and opportunities to network with other HARC members.
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
The call for abstracts is open from June 7th, 2019 to August 9th, 2019.
As part of the HARC Meeting on Wednesday, January 29th, 2020, we are seeking abstracts for 15-minute research presentations to serve as catalysts for new ideas and discussion.
HARC aims to promote the use of innovative research methods to achieve precision home visiting —identifying the ingredients of home visiting that work best for specific families under certain circumstances. This approach has four key hallmarks:
- Focus on active ingredients, rather than complex models: Most home visiting models combine many ingredients to achieve diverse outcomes. These ingredients might or might not have a strong evidence base. HARC focuses on ingredients that, if found effective, can be adopted across relevant models to hasten the scale up of what works.
- Broad-based partnerships: Each stakeholder group brings a unique and vital perspective to home visiting. HARC brings together scientists, practitioners, community members, and policy makers to partner in defining and testing specific ingredients to strengthen and broaden impacts.
- Explicit definitions and measurement: Understanding what specific ingredients work, for whom, requires explicit definition and measurement of ingredients, outcomes, mediators, and possible moderators of impacts. HARC’s approach embodies specificity in definition and measurement.
- Efficiency in testing ingredients: Many new research designs, such as adaptive trials and rapid cycle techniques, can accelerate our learning of what works, for whom.
Examples of relevant abstract topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Systematic reviews of the evidence that specific ingredients of home visiting are active, that is, that they impact intended near-term outcomes;
- Completed research or research in progress incorporating the above hallmarks; and
- Projects that include families as meaningful partners in the design of interventions, definition of outcomes, and research methods.
Abstracts will be reviewed based on the following criteria:
- Alignment with the hallmarks listed above.
- Potential to contribute to innovative research to advance precision home visiting
Abstracts should be emailed to harc@jhu.edu by August 9th, 2019 at 11:59pm EST.
There is no specific form for abstracts. Please include the following information for each submission:
- Title of presentation
- Presenter name, title, affiliation, email address, phone number. Please note that we allow only one presenter per abstract submitted.
- Names and affiliations of coauthors, if any.
- Abstract text (500 words maximum) specifying the following: Rationale for the project; project objective; methods; key results to date; implications for the field.
Presenters will be notified of acceptance decisions in mid-September. In October – December, presenters of accepted abstracts will be expected to take part in planning calls with meeting organizers to assure that their presentations align well with meeting themes and participant learning needs.
Presenters will be reimbursed for one night’s hotel stay at the Grand Hyatt Washington.
PRECONFERENCE WORKSHOP
This year we are also offering a Precision Home Visiting Research Preconference Workshop on Tuesday, January 28th, 2020 from 2-5pm. This Workshop is open to a limited number of participants who will meet in small groups to discuss their ideas for precision home visiting research with HARC team members and other investigators.
The goal of the Preconference Workshop is to build the capacity of those who are highly motivated to carry out precision home visiting research. Intended participants in the Workshop are those who plan to initiate a funding proposal or study within six months that embodies the principles of precision home visiting research. All Workshop attendees will be asked to bring a working draft of an aims page describing their proposed research. Workshop activities will include the following:
- A brief presentation and discussion of precision home visiting and the principles of precision home visiting research
- Breakout sessions of 4-5 attendees in each. Each group will have a mixture of HARC team members and other Workshop participants. Participants will discuss their aims pages within the groups. Groups will rotate twice.
There are a limited number of spots available for the Preconference Workshop. Attendance is free of charge, but participants will need to pay for their own travel expenses.
The registration intent form includes a section allowing participants to indicate if they are interested in the Preconference Workshop. Interested participants will then be contacted and asked to provide a short paragraph describing their research idea and their long-term plans for submitting a funding proposal or initiating a study. Selected participants will be given guidance for developing and bringing a working draft of an aims page to the Workshop itself.
REGISTRATION
Registration is open from June 7th, 2019 to August 9th, 2019.
To indicate your interest in attending the HARC Meeting and/or the HARC Preconference Workshop, please fill out this intent form by August 9th, 2019. There is no registration fee, but spots are limited. Your registration for both meetings will be confirmed by mid-September 2019.
Please forward questions to the HARC Coordinating Center at harc@jhu.edu.
The Ninth National Summit on Quality in Home Visiting Program will be held on January 29th-January 31st, 2020 at the Grand Hyatt Washington. Registration for the Summit is separate from registration for the HARC Meeting, although organizers of both meetings are working together to align meeting content. Specifics about registration for the Summit can be found here.