ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides extensive technical assistance to all the projects throughout course of the Cooperative Agreement to maximize the quality of data available to demonstrate the successes of these innovative service models. In 1994, the US Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), through its Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) Program, funded 27 innovative models of HIV care. These projects, known collectively as the SPNS Cooperative Agreement, represented a diverse group of organizations with common goals-to improve access to care, health, and quality of life for traditionally underserved populations living with HIV/AIDS. The book also provides an overview of the HRSA HIV/AIDS Bureau SPNS Cooperative Agreement grant initiative, a collaborative paper from each of project work group clusters, and a paper detailing a number of conceptual issues in implementing program evaluation in the “real world” community organizations.
