At the first meeting in Region 2 on April 27, 1996, Kathy Henderson and Diane Novaczek, program co-ordinators for Region 2, said that they judged that 40% of the target in that region had responded to an invitation. The invitation program had begun the previous August. The author was provided with a copy of the Region 2 version of the letter of invitation. It mimicked the suggested letter from the Standards publication. When the author informed the staff that this letter (Appendix D) was probably unreadable by a large portion of their target audience, the staff responded that they were not aware of that possibility (1996).

At the second meeting, November 28, 1997, Kathy Henderson indicated that the estimation was that 55% of members of the target group had been screened. It was indicated to the author that the initial recruitment effort of sending a letter of invitation had not caused the desired response and during the interim between the two meetings, a number of other efforts had been undertaken. These efforts included information sessions with family physicians, outreach to community groups that included members of the target audience and revising the letter of invitation, following the author's comments at the previous meeting, to a more readable level (Appendix D). Mrs. Henderson attributed the increase in responses to the outreach efforts. It should be noted here that the author is aware that in commenting on the content of the letter and the subsequent action of the Region 2 staff, his role was that of participant observer (1997).

The author interviewed Sylvana Bosca, co-ordinator of the program for Region 6, on December 1, 1997. Region 6 corporation's program began on November 1, 1995. As of October 31, 1997, 36% of the target audience had responded. Region 6 had also undertaken a number of efforts to supplement the letter of invitation mailings, including public forums on women's health issues, meetings with family physicians and announcements on community television (1997).

On September 29, 1997, the author, acting as an informed interviewer, spoke with Chris Heissner, who replaced Stephanie Smith as Department staff person with responsibility for the program. He characterised the response rate to the program overall as "low." He said that planning was underway to redouble communication efforts and to potentially adopt some of the outreach techniques seen in the regions on a province-wide basis to recruit those from whom no response to the letter of invitation had been received (1997).