A Novel Patient Recruitment Strategy: Patient Selection Directly from the Community through Linkage to Clinical Data

Utilization of EHRs for clinical trials: a systematic review

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

Clinical trials are of high importance for medical progress. This study conducted a systematic review to identify the applications of EHRs in supporting and enhancing clinical trials.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A systematic search of PubMed was conducted on 12/3/2023 to identify relevant studies on the use of EHRs in clinical trials. Studies were included if they (1) were full-text journal articles, (2) were written in English, (3) examined applications of EHR data to support clinical trial processes (e.g. recruitment, screening, data collection). A standardized form was used by two reviewers to extract data on: study design, EHR-enabled process(es), related outcomes, and limitations.

RESULTS

Following full-text review, 19 studies met the predefined eligibility criteria and were included. Overall, included studies consistently demonstrated that EHR data integration improves clinical trial feasibility and efficiency in recruitment, screening, data collection, and trial design.

CONCLUSIONS

According to the results of the present study, the use of Electronic Health Records in conducting clinical trials is very helpful. Therefore, it is better for researchers to use EHR in their studies for easy access to more accurate and comprehensive data. EHRs collects all individual data, including demographic, clinical, diagnostic, and therapeutic data. Moreover, all data is available seamlessly in EHR. In future studies, it is better to consider the cost-effectiveness of using EHR in clinical trials.

Engaging Patients and Other Stakeholders in "Designing for Dissemination" of Record Linkage Methods and Tools

BACKGROUND

Novel record linkage (RL) methods have the potential to enhance clinical informatics by integrating patient data from multiple sources-including electronic health records, insurance claims, and digital health devices-to inform patient-centered care. Engaging patients and other stakeholders in the use of RL methods in patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) is a key step in ensuring RL methods are viewed as acceptable, appropriate, and useful. The University of Colorado Record Linkage (CURL) platform empowers the use of RL in PCOR.

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to describe the process of engaging patients and other stakeholders in the design of an RL dissemination package to support the use of RL methods in PCOR.

METHODS

Customer discovery, value proposition design, and user experience methods were used to iteratively develop an RL dissemination package that includes animated explainer videos for patients and an RL research planning workbook for researchers. Patients and other stakeholders (researchers, data managers, and regulatory officials) were engaged in the RL dissemination package design.

RESULTS

Patient partners emphasized the importance of conveying how RL methods may benefit patients and the rules researchers must follow to protect the privacy and security of patient data. Other stakeholders described accuracy, flexibility, efficiency, and data security compared with other available RL solutions. Dissemination package communication products reflect the value propositions identified by key stakeholders. As prioritized by patients, the animated explainer videos emphasize the data privacy and security processes and procedures employed when performing research using RL. The RL workbook addresses researchers' and data managers' needs to iteratively design RL projects and provides accompanying resources to alleviate leadership and regulatory officials' concerns about data regulation compliance.

CONCLUSION

Dissemination products to promote adoption and use of CURL include materials to facilitate patient engagement in RL research and investigator step-by-step decision-making materials about the integration of RL methods in PCOR.

Rudin R, Sulca Flores J, Goolkasian G, Sousa J, Rodriguez J, Lipsitz S, Foer D, K. Dalal A. Assessing Equitable Recruitment in a Digital Health Trial for Asthma

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to assess a multipronged strategy using primarily digital methods to equitably recruit asthma patients into a clinical trial of a digital health intervention.

METHODS

We approached eligible patients using at least one of eight recruitment strategies. We recorded approach dates and the strategy that led to completion of a web-based eligibility questionnaire that was reported during the verbal consent phone call. Study team members conducted monthly sessions using a structured guide to identify recruitment barriers and facilitators. The proportion of participants who reported being recruited by a portal or nonportal strategy was measured as our outcomes. We used Fisher's exact test to compare outcomes by equity variable, and multivariable logistic regression to control for each covariate and adjust effect size estimates. Using grounded theory, we coded and extracted themes regarding recruitment barriers and facilitators.

RESULTS

The majority (84.4%) of patients who met study inclusion criteria were patient portal enrollees. Of 6,366 eligible patients who were approached, 627 completed the eligibility questionnaire and were less frequently Hispanic, less frequently Spanish-speaking, and more frequently patient portal enrollees. Of 445 patients who consented to participate, 241 (54.2%) reported completing the eligibility questionnaire after being contacted by a patient portal message. In adjusted analysis, only race (odds ratio [OR]: 0.46, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.28-0.77, p = 0.003) and college education (OR: 0.60, 95% CI: 0.39-0.91, p = 0.016) remained significant. Key recruitment barriers included technology issues (e.g., lack of email access) and facilitators included bilingual study staff, Spanish-language recruitment materials, targeted phone calls, and clinician-initiated "1-click" referrals.

CONCLUSION

A primarily digital strategy to recruit patients into a digital health trial is unlikely to achieve equitable participation, even in a population overrepresented by patient portal enrollees. Nondigital recruitment methods that address racial and educational disparities and less active portal enrollees are necessary to ensure equity in clinical trial enrollment.

Electronic Health Record-Triggered Research Infrastructure Combining Real-world Electronic Health Record Data and Patient-Reported Outcomes to Detect Benefits, Risks, and Impact of Medication: Development Study

Background

Real-world data from electronic health records (EHRs) represent a wealth of information for studying the benefits and risks of medical treatment. However, they are limited in scope and should be complemented by information from the patient perspective.

Objective

The aim of this study is to develop an innovative research infrastructure that combines information from EHRs with patient experiences reported in questionnaires to monitor the risks and benefits of medical treatment.

Methods

We focused on the treatment of overactive bladder (OAB) in general practice as a use case. To develop the Benefit, Risk, and Impact of Medication Monitor (BRIMM) infrastructure, we first performed a requirement analysis. BRIMM’s starting point is routinely recorded general practice EHR data that are sent to the Dutch Nivel Primary Care Database weekly. Patients with OAB were flagged weekly on the basis of diagnoses and prescriptions. They were invited subsequently for participation by their general practitioner (GP), via a trusted third party. Patients received a series of questionnaires on disease status, pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments, adverse drug reactions, drug adherence, and quality of life. The questionnaires and a dedicated feedback portal were developed in collaboration with a patient association for pelvic-related diseases, Bekkenbodem4All. Participating patients and GPs received feedback. An expert meeting was organized to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the new research infrastructure.

Results

The BRIMM infrastructure was developed and implemented. In the Nivel Primary Care Database, 2933 patients with OAB from 27 general practices were flagged. GPs selected 1636 (55.78%) patients who were eligible for the study, of whom 295 (18.0% of eligible patients) completed the first questionnaire. A total of 288 (97.6%) patients consented to the linkage of their questionnaire data with their EHR data. According to experts, the strengths of the infrastructure were the linkage of patient-reported outcomes with EHR data, comparison of pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments, flexibility of the infrastructure, and low registration burden for GPs. Methodological weaknesses, such as susceptibility to bias, patient selection, and low participation rates among GPs and patients, were seen as weaknesses and threats. Opportunities represent usefulness for policy makers and health professionals, conditional approval of medication, data linkage to other data sources, and feedback to patients.

Conclusions

The BRIMM research infrastructure has the potential to assess the benefits and safety of (medical) treatment in real-life situations using a unique combination of EHRs and patient-reported outcomes. As patient involvement is an important aspect of the treatment process, generating knowledge from clinical and patient perspectives is valuable for health care providers, patients, and policy makers. The developed methodology can easily be applied to other treatments and health problems.

Promoting inclusion in clinical trials-a rapid review of the literature and recommendations for action

Background

Without inclusion of diverse research participants, it is challenging to understand how study findings will translate into the real world. Despite this, a lack of inclusion of those from under-served groups in research is a prevailing problem due to multi-faceted barriers acting at multiple levels. Therefore, we rapidly reviewed international published literature, in relation to clinical trials, on barriers relating to inclusion, and evidence of approaches that are effective in overcoming these.

Methods

A rapid literature review was conducted searching PubMed for peer-reviewed articles that discussed barriers to inclusion or strategies to improve inclusion in clinical trial research published between 2010 and 2021. Grey literature articles were excluded.

Results

Seventy-two eligible articles were included. The main barriers identified were language and communication, lack of trust, access to trials, eligibility criteria, attitudes and beliefs, lack of knowledge around clinical trials, and logistical and practical issues. In relation to evidence-based strategies and enablers, two key themes arose: [1] a multi-faceted approach is essential [2]; no single strategy was universally effective either within or between trials. The key evidence-based strategies identified were cultural competency training, community partnerships, personalised approach, multilingual materials and staff, communication-specific strategies, increasing understanding and trust, and tackling logistical barriers.

Conclusions

Many of the barriers relating to inclusion are the same as those that impact trial design and healthcare delivery generally. However, the presentation of these barriers among different under-served groups may be unique to each population’s particular circumstances, background, and needs. Based on the literature, we make 15 recommendations that, if implemented, may help improve inclusion within clinical trials and clinical research more generally. The three main recommendations include improving cultural competency and sensitivity of all clinical trial staff through training and ongoing personal development, the need to establish a diverse community advisory panel for ongoing input into the research process, and increasing recruitment of staff from under-served groups. Implementation of these recommendations may help improve representation of under-served groups in clinical trials which would improve the external validity of associated findings.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13063-021-05849-7.

Application of Information Technology to Clinical Trial Evaluation and Enrollment: A Review

Importance

As cancer treatment has become more individualized, oncologic clinical trials have become more complex. Increasingly numerous and stringent eligibility criteria frequently include tumor molecular or genomic characteristics that may not be readily identified in medical records, rendering it difficult to best match clinical trials with clinical sites and to identify potentially eligible patients once a clinical trial has been selected and activated. Partly because of these factors, enrollment rates for cancer clinical trials remain low, creating delays and increased costs for drug development. Information technology (IT) platforms have been applied to the implementation and conduct of clinical trials to improve efficiencies in several medical fields, and these platforms have recently been introduced to oncologic studies.

Observations

This review summarizes cancer and noncancer studies that used IT platforms for assistance with clinical trial site selection, patient recruitment, and patient screening. The review does not address the use of IT in other aspects of clinical research, such as wearable physical activity monitors or telehealth visits. A large number of IT platforms (which may be patient facing, site or investigator facing, or sponsor facing) are now commercially available. These applications use artificial intelligence and/or natural language processing to identify and summarize protocol eligibility criteria, institutional patient populations, and individual electronic health records. Although there is an expanding body of literature examining the role of this technology, relatively few studies to date have been performed in oncologic settings.

Conclusions and Relevance

This review found that an increasing number and variety of IT platforms were available to assist in the planning and conduct of clinical trials. Because oncologic clinical care and clinical trial protocols are particularly complex, nuanced, and individualized, published experience with this technology in other fields may not be fully applicable to cancer settings. The extent to which these services will overcome ongoing and increasing challenges in cancer clinical research remains unclear.

Contemporary use of real-world data for clinical trial conduct in the United States: a scoping review

OBJECTIVE

Real-world data (RWD), defined as routinely collected healthcare data, can be a potential catalyst for addressing challenges faced in clinical trials. We performed a scoping review of database-specific RWD applications within clinical trial contexts, synthesizing prominent uses and themes.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Querying 3 biomedical literature databases, research articles using electronic health records, administrative claims databases, or clinical registries either within a clinical trial or in tandem with methodology related to clinical trials were included. Articles were required to use at least 1 US RWD source. All abstract screening, full-text screening, and data extraction was performed by 1 reviewer. Two reviewers independently verified all decisions.

RESULTS

Of 2020 screened articles, 89 qualified: 59 articles used electronic health records, 29 used administrative claims, and 26 used registries. Our synthesis was driven by the general life cycle of a clinical trial, culminating into 3 major themes: trial process tasks (51 articles); dissemination strategies (6); and generalizability assessments (34). Despite a diverse set of diseases studied, <10% of trials using RWD for trial process tasks evaluated medications or procedures (5/51). All articles highlighted data-related challenges, such as missing values.

DISCUSSION

Database-specific RWD have been occasionally leveraged for various clinical trial tasks. We observed underuse of RWD within conducted medication or procedure trials, though it is subject to the confounder of implicit report of RWD use.

CONCLUSION

Enhanced incorporation of RWD should be further explored for medication or procedure trials, including better understanding of how to handle related data quality issues to facilitate RWD use.

Using the RE-AIM framework to evaluate internal and external validity of mobile phone-based interventions in diabetes self-management education and support

OBJECTIVE

We evaluated the extent to which studies that tested short message service (SMS)- and application (app)-based interventions for diabetes self-management education and support (DSMES) report on factors that inform both internal and external validity as measured by the RE-AIM (Reach, Efficacy/Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance) framework.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We systematically searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature), and IEEE Xplore Digital Library for articles from January 1, 2009, to February 28, 2019. We carried out a multistage screening process followed by email communications with study authors for missing or discrepant information. Two independent coders coded eligible articles using a 23-item validated data extraction tool based on the RE-AIM framework.

RESULTS

Twenty studies (21 articles) were included in the analysis. The comprehensiveness of reporting on the RE-AIM criteria across the SMS- and app-based DSMES studies was low. With respect to internal validity, most interventions were well described and primary clinical or behavioral outcomes were measured and reported. However, gaps exist in areas of attrition, measures of potential negative outcomes, the extent to which the protocol was delivered as intended, and description on delivery agents. Likewise, we found limited information on external validity indicators across adoption, implementation, and maintenance domains.

CONCLUSIONS

Reporting gaps were found in internal validity but more so in external validity in the current SMS- and app-based DSMES literature. Because most studies in this review were efficacy studies, the generalizability of these interventions cannot be determined. Future research should adopt the RE-AIM dimensions to improve the quality of reporting and enhance the likelihood of translating research to practice.

Key components and IT assistance of participant management in clinical research: a scoping review

Objectives

Managing participants and their data are fundamental for the success of a clinical trial. Our review identifies and describes processes that deal with management of trial participants and highlights information technology (IT) assistance for clinical research in the context of participant management.

Methods

A scoping literature review design, based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses statement, was used to identify literature on trial participant-related proceedings, work procedures, or workflows, and assisting electronic systems.

Results

The literature search identified 1329 articles of which 111 were included for analysis. Participant-related procedures were categorized into 4 major trial processes: recruitment, obtaining informed consent, managing identities, and managing administrative data. Our results demonstrated that management of trial participants is considered in nearly every step of clinical trials, and that IT was successfully introduced to all participant-related areas of a clinical trial to facilitate processes.

Discussion

There is no precise definition of participant management, so a broad search strategy was necessary, resulting in a high number of articles that had to be excluded. Nevertheless, this review provides a comprehensive overview of participant management-related components, which was lacking so far. The review contributes to a better understanding of how computer-assisted management of participants in clinical trials is possible.

A roadmap for precision medicine research recruitment: empirical assessment of the public's willingness to participate

Aim: Precision medicine research recruitment poses challenges. To better understand factors impacting recruitment, this study assessed hypothetical willingness, public opinions of and familiarity with precision medicine research. Materials & methods: Adult attendees (n = 942) at the 2017 Minnesota State Fair completed an electronic survey. Results: Few respondents had heard of 'precision medicine' (18%), and familiarity came mostly from media (43%). Fifty-six percent expressed hypothetical willingness to participate in precision medicine research. Significant predictors of willingness were: comfort with unconditional research; perceiving precision medicine research as beneficial, trustworthy and confidential; having a graduate degree; comfort with self- but not family-participation; and familiarity with precision/personalized medicine. Conclusion: This study identified predictors of hypothetical willingness to participate in precision medicine research. Alternative recruitment strategies are needed.

Review of Clinical Research Informatics

OBJECTIVES

Clinical Research Informatics (CRI) declares its scope in its name, but its content, both in terms of the clinical research it supports-and sometimes initiates-and the methods it has developed over time, reach much further than the name suggests. The goal of this review is to celebrate the extraordinary diversity of activity and of results, not as a prize-giving pageant, but in recognition of the field, the community that both serves and is sustained by it, and of its interdisciplinarity and its international dimension.

METHODS

Beyond personal awareness of a range of work commensurate with the author's own research, it is clear that, even with a thorough literature search, a comprehensive review is impossible. Moreover, the field has grown and subdivided to an extent that makes it very hard for one individual to be familiar with every branch or with more than a few branches in any depth. A literature survey was conducted that focused on informatics-related terms in the general biomedical and healthcare literature, and specific concerns ("artificial intelligence", "data models", "analytics", etc.) in the biomedical informatics (BMI) literature. In addition to a selection from the results from these searches, suggestive references within them were also considered.

RESULTS

The substantive sections of the paper-Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and "Big Data" Analytics; Common Data Models, Data Quality, and Standards; Phenotyping and Cohort Discovery; Privacy: Deidentification, Distributed Computation, Blockchain; Causal Inference and Real-World Evidence-provide broad coverage of these active research areas, with, no doubt, a bias towards this reviewer's interests and preferences, landing on a number of papers that stood out in one way or another, or, alternatively, exemplified a particular line of work.

CONCLUSIONS

CRI is thriving, not only in the familiar major centers of research, but more widely, throughout the world. This is not to pretend that the distribution is uniform, but to highlight the potential for this domain to play a prominent role in supporting progress in medicine, healthcare, and wellbeing everywhere. We conclude with the observation that CRI and its practitioners would make apt stewards of the new medical knowledge that their methods will bring forward.

Increasing access to clinical research using an innovative mobile recruitment approach: The (MoRe) concept

Background

Access to healthcare delivery programs and systems is a primary correlate to the overall health and well-being of Veterans and the general population. Participation in clinical research is a gateway to novel therapies that are intended to address current global health issues. Meeting or exceeding recruitment goals in clinical research is one of the key determinants of the timely and successful completion of a study. The travel and time burdens experienced by study participants are often considered barriers to their enrollment into clinical research. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Cooperative Studies Program (CSP) established a consortium of nine VA medical centers (VAMCs) called the Network of Dedicated Enrollment Sites (NODES). The NODES program provides study site-level expertise and innovative approaches that address challenges to clinical research execution. In alignment with our mission, our program developed an approach to increase study participant access to clinical research through implementing “Mobile Recruitment (MoRe)” units. This manuscript describes the utility and challenges associated with employing this strategy to address three common barriers to clinical research participation: 1) research participant travel burden, 2) participant access to study opportunities, and 3) low participant enrollment.

Methods

A plan to introduce the Mobile Recruitment (MoRe) unit as a recruitment strategy was piloted for a high-volume, observational cohort study and mega biobank in the VA health care system, the “Million Veteran Program (MVP)”. MoRe is a recruitment strategy for CSP research integrating mobile technology and atypical research recruitment locations. Recruitment locations include primary or main VA hospitals and their assigned VA Community-Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOCs). Each Node site (n = 9) received components of the MoRe unit including a laptop, printer, portable cart with storage space, cooler/ice packs for specimen storage and transport. Each site's usage of these components varied based on its respective needs. Activities focused on both VA main facilities and CBOC facilities for recruitment.

Results

Seven of the nine Node sites compared the effectiveness of the MoRe unit on MVP study enrollment outcomes over three-time points: pre-intervention period, intervention period, and post-intervention period. The utilization of MoRe in the intervention period demonstrated a 36.9% increase in enrollment compared to the previous six months (pre-intervention period). There was a 2% enrollment increase at the six-month post-intervention period as compared to the intervention period. When comparing the pre-intervention period to the post-intervention period (duration of eighteen months), enrollment increased by 38.9%.

Conclusion

Five of the seven sites experienced an increase in enrollment during the intervention and post-intervention periods. The two sites without an increase in enrollment experienced various extenuating factors. Characteristics of sites using MoRe included the ability to utilize a smaller, unconventional space, i.e. not a traditional clinical research exam space for recruitment. MoRe was utilized in hospital laboratory space, CBOCs, primary care clinics, and other subspecialty clinics that allowed recruitment activities but did not have dedicated space to offer the research teams for that purpose. This initiative successfully demonstrated the benefit of deploying the unit, proving its utility in cases in where there was a lack of space or alternative workstations for research activities. The implementation of MoRe by NODES as a recruitment strategy for MVP may be transferable to other VA clinical research studies, as well as to other healthcare settings executing similar clinical research activities.

Recruiting for a pragmatic trial using the electronic health record and patient portal: successes and lessons learned

Objective

Querying electronic health records (EHRs) to find patients meeting study criteria is an efficient method of identifying potential study participants. We aimed to measure the effectiveness of EHR-driven recruitment in the context of ADAPTABLE (Aspirin Dosing: A Patient-centric Trial Assessing Benefits and Long-Term Effectiveness)-a pragmatic trial aiming to recruit 15 000 patients.

Materials and Methods

We compared the participant yield of 4 recruitment methods: in-clinic recruitment by a research coordinator, letters, direct email, and patient portal messages. Taken together, the latter 2 methods comprised our EHR-driven electronic recruitment workflow.

Results

The electronic recruitment workflow sent electronic messages to 12 254 recipients; 13.5% of these recipients visited the study website, and 4.2% enrolled in the study. Letters were sent to 427 recipients; 5.6% visited the study website, and 3.3% enrolled in the study. Coordinators recruited 339 participants in clinic; 23.6% visited the study website, and 16.8% enrolled in the study. Five-hundred-nine of the 580 UNC enrollees (87.8%) were recruited using an electronic method.

Discussion

Electronic recruitment reached a wide net of patients, recruited many participants to the study, and resulted in a workflow that can be reused for future studies. In-clinic recruitment saw the highest yield, suggesting that a combination of recruitment methods may be the best approach. Future work should account for demographic skew that may result by recruiting from a pool of patient portal users.

Conclusion

The success of electronic recruitment for ADAPTABLE makes this workflow well worth incorporating into an overall recruitment strategy, particularly for a pragmatic trial.

Development of Patient Databases for Endocrinological Clinical and Pharmaceutical Trials: A Survey

BACKGROUND

According to European legislation, a clinical trial is a research involving patients, which also includes a research end-product. The main objective of the clinical trial is to prove that the research product, i.e. a proposed medication or treatment, is effective and safe for patients. The implementation, development, and operation of a patient database, which will function as a matrix of samples with the appropriate parameterization, may provide appropriate tools to generate samples for clinical trials.

AIMS

The aim of the present work is to review the literature with respect to the up-to-date progress on the development of databases for clinical trials and patient recruitment using free and open-source software in the field of endocrinology.

METHODS

An electronic literature search was conducted by the authors from 1984 to June 2019. Original articles and systematic reviews selected, and the titles and abstracts of papers screened to determine whether they met the eligibility criteria, and full texts of the selected articles were retrieved.

RESULTS

The present review has indicated that the electronic health records are related with both the patient recruitment and the decision support systems in the domain of endocrinology. The free and open-source software provides integrated solutions concerning electronic health records, patient recruitment, and the decision support systems.

CONCLUSION

The patient recruitment relates closely to the electronic health record. There is maturity at the academic and research level, which may lead to good practices for the deployment of the electronic health record in selecting the right patients for clinical trials.

Embedding research recruitment in a community resource e-prescribing system: lessons from an implementation study on Chicago's South Side

OBJECTIVE

The study sought to implement and assess the CommunityRx e-prescribing system to recruit research participants from a predominantly non-Hispanic Black community on Chicago's South Side.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

CommunityRx integrates with electronic medical record systems to generate a personalized list of health-promoting community resources (HealtheRx). Between December 2015 and December 2016, HealtheRxs distributed at outpatient visits to adults with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease also incentivized participation in a pulmonary research registry. Usual practices for registry recruitment continued in parallel.

RESULTS

Focus groups established acceptability and appropriateness among the target population. Pulmonary research registry recruitment information was included on 13 437 HealtheRxs. Forty-one (90% non-Hispanic Black) patients responded with willingness to participate and 9 (8 non-Hispanic Black) returned a signed consent required to enroll. Usual recruitment practices enrolled 4 registrants (1 non-Hispanic Black).

DISCUSSION

Automating research recruitment using a community e-prescribing system is feasible.

CONCLUSIONS

Implementation of an electronic medical record-integrated, community resource referral tool promotes enrollment of eligible underrepresented research participants; however, enrollment was low.

A Comprehensive Approach to Community Recruitment for Clinical and Translational Research

Recruitment and engagement for clinical and translational research is challenging, especially among medically underserved and ethnic or racial minority populations. We present a comprehensive model developed through the Clinical and Translational Science Center at the University of New Mexico (UNM) Health Sciences Center that addresses 3 critical aspects of participant recruitment. The components of the model are: (1) Recruitment from within UNM to UNM-centered studies, (2) recruitment from within UNM to community-based studies, and (3) recruitment from outside UNM to UNM-centered studies. This model has increased research participant recruitment, especially among medically underserved populations, and offers generalizable translational solutions to common clinical and translational research challenges, especially in settings with similar demographic and geographic characteristics.