ABSTRACT
The Recruitment Innovation Center (RIC) has created a toolkit of novel strategies to engage potential participants in response to recruitment and retention challenges associated with COVID-19 studies. The toolkit contains pragmatic, generalizable resources to help research teams increase awareness of clinical trials and opportunities to participate; produce culturally sensitive and engaging recruitment materials; improve consent and return of results processes; and enhance recruitment of individuals from populations disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. This resource, the "RIC COVID-19 Recruitment and Retention Toolkit," is available free online. We describe the toolkit and the community feedback used to author and curate this resource.
ABSTRACT
Clinical trials continue to face significant challenges in participant recruitment and retention. The Recruitment Innovation Center (RIC), part of the Trial Innovation Network (TIN), has been funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health to develop innovative strategies and technologies to enhance participant engagement in all stages of multicenter clinical trials. In collaboration with investigator teams and liaisons at Clinical and Translational Science Award institutions, the RIC is charged with the mission to design, field-test, and refine novel resources in the context of individual clinical trials. These innovations are disseminated via newsletters, publications, a virtual toolbox on the TIN website, and RIC-hosted collaboration webinars. The RIC has designed, implemented, and promised customized recruitment support for 173 studies across many diverse disease areas. This support has incorporated site feasibility assessments, community input sessions, recruitment materials recommendations, social media campaigns, and an array of study-specific suggestions. The RIC's goal is to evaluate the efficacy of these resources and provide access to all investigating teams, so that more trials can be completed on time, within budget, with diverse participation, and with enough accrual to power statistical analyses and make substantive contributions to the advancement of healthcare.
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: Social media, including Facebook outreach, is increasingly being used as a participant recruitment tool, and may be particularly useful in tobacco and smoking cessation studies. The Recruitment Innovation Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center partnered with Project LUNA, a smoking cessation study, to conduct a pilot social media campaign aimed at increasing study recruitment. METHODS: Two posts encouraging study participation were developed and promoted on Facebook to users with an interest in smoking-related topics, with a link to a study-specific webpage. Facebook and website analytics were collected, including impressions, clicks, click-through rates, website traffic, and clicks to the study screening form. Study screening and enrollment data were also collected. RESULTS: The Facebook campaign ran in June 2019 in the greater Houston area. In total, the Facebook posts logged 1,179,844 impressions, 6490 clicks, and an overall click-through rate of 0.55%. There were no differences in response to the two different promotional posts. Approximately 3812 unique individuals visited an intermediary study page, with 473 expressing interest in the study. Forty-three potential participants contacted the study team, resulting in study enrollment and randomization of 23 participants, with an estimated cost per enrolled participant of $441. CONCLUSIONS: The social media campaign was successful at increasing outreach and interest in the LUNA study. However, the price-per-participant enrolled was higher than in comparable tobacco cessation studies. These results and lessons learned may be beneficial to others considering social media as a recruitment method for their clinical research trial.
