Research, Evaluation, and Analysis of Call Handling on Three-Digit Hotlines (REACH-3D)

America’s 911 and alternative three-digit service-hotline universe comprises a patchwork of about 10,000 specific systems that face significant funding, staffing, coordination, and operational challenges. This field is thus fragmented and poorly understood. University of Chicago Health Lab, partnering with National Association of State 911 Administrators (NASNA), Inform USA (formerly Alliance of Information and Referral Systems or AIRS), United Way, Medical College of Wisconsin, the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Eagles Global Alliance (The Eagles), International Association of Firefighters (IAFF), National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Native and Strong Lifeline, TDIforAccess (TDI, formerly Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing), The Arc For People with Intellectual and Development Disabilities (The Arc), NORC (National Opinion Research Center), and others, seek to address these gaps. 

Research, Evaluation, and Analysis of Call Handling on Three-Digit Hotlines (REACH-3D) includes meaningful engagement with those closest to the problem, drawing on the perspectives of practitioners and community members. REACH-3D’s multi-disciplinary team includes researchers, practitioners, and community members with lived experience and expertise spanning emergency crisis response, deaf and hard of hearing accessibility, North American Indigenous populations and the challenges they face, intellectual and developmental disabilities, public health, public policy, medicine, criminology, social work, policing, public opinion research, and relevant technologies. REACH-3D will assess these hotlines’ discrete and mutual ability to safely, equitably, efficiently, and effectively meet public health and safety needs, while avoiding unnecessary or unwarranted criminal legal system involvement. 

REACH-3D employs a survey and case studies approach to gathering the most extensive and comprehensive data ever collected regarding the 911 landscape, alternative three-digit service lines, and their accompanying interactions to better-meet public needs for government and community-based services. Project activities include extensive literature reviews; an assembly and analysis of three-digit lines’ operational, training, and programmatic data; surveys of call-line staff and leadership; surveys of policymakers and the general public; and case studies of communities in particular need of accompanying services. Together, these activities will provide a clearer understanding of the practical issues and opportunities facing three-digit service lines. 

REACH-3D will immediately enhance the understanding of these disparate systems and identify the comprehensive challenges these systems confront, including those related to funding, staffing, operations, and coordination. REACH-3D’s findings will provide scientific opportunities for high-quality peer-review publications. These will also provide explicit guidance for local, state, and regional practitioners, policymakers, and researchers, which will be developed and disseminated via practitioner and policymaker guidance, briefs, toolkits, and popular press. CA/NCF