Building Trust: Strategies for Recruiting Underrepresented Populations in Research during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected racial and ethnic populations within the United States, creating a distinct set of circumstances that exacerbated barriers to research participation for underrepresented communities. This article aims to provide a rationale that validates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these groups and suggests strategies for participant recruitment while sharing lessons learned from our own laboratory. By understanding the barriers that limit the recruitment of intended populations, researchers can implement culturally sensitive strategies and work towards a more inclusive body of literature with improved participation from underrepresented racial and ethnic populations.

Creating and implementing a COVID-19 recruitment Data Mart

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented strain on every aspect of the healthcare system, and clinical research is no exception. Researchers are working against the clock to ramp up research studies addressing every angle of COVID-19 - gaining a better understanding of person-to-person transmission, improving methods for diagnosis, and developing therapies to treat infection and vaccines to prevent it. The impact of the virus on research efforts is not limited to investigators and their teams. Potential participants also face unparalleled opportunities and requests to participate in research, which can result in a significant amount of participant fatigue. The Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research recognized early in the pandemic that a solution to assist researchers in the rapid identification of potential participants was critical, and thus developed the COVID-19 Recruitment Data Mart. This solution does not rest solely on technology; the addition of experienced project managers to support researchers and facilitate collaboration was essential. Since the platform and study support tools were launched on July 20, 2020, four studies have been onboarded and a total of 1693 potential participant matches have been shared. Each of these patients had agreed in advance to direct contact for COVID-19 research and had been matched to study-specific inclusion/exclusion criteria. Our innovative Data Mart system is scalable and looks promising as a generalizable solution for simultaneously recommending individuals from a pool of patients against a pool of time-sensitive trial opportunities.

Building and Sustaining a Community Advisory Board of African American Older Adults as the Foundation for Volunteer Research Recruitment and Retention in Health Sciences

Older African Americans' participation in health-related research is severely limited; they are not involved in sufficient numbers to ensure the applicability of advancements in medical and behavioral health. This research participation gap exacerbates older African Americans' vulnerability to poor health outcomes and disparities. The Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research employs a progressive community-based participatory model that utilizes a structured community advisory board (CAB) of African American older adults in metro Detroit, Michigan to oversee the research recruitment and retention of fellow minority older adult research participants. CAB members develop and support community health programming that provides free resources to older adults and also serves as fertile ground for recruiting participants in a volunteer research registry. CAB members are also provided ongoing training on social and behavioral health research and are supported in acting as a consultancy to outside researchers where they can be compensated for their expertise and engagement. This community-engaged model of sustaining a CAB of African American older adults offers key lessons learned on building relationships and trust, valuing and leveraging community members' expertise and time, sharing decision-making, and fostering genuine community all while promoting research recruitment and retention among underserved populations.

Detecting Deception in Our Research Participants: Are Your Participants Who You Think They Are?

There is increasing awareness of the potential negative impacts of participant deception on research, including possibly undermining reliability and reproducibility of study findings. These deceptive individuals set their personal interests above the rules of study participation, thereby jeopardizing data quality as well as placing themselves and others at risk. The costs of participant deception are numerous. Overall, it reduces statistical power and may even result in false conclusions about efficacy and safety. To date, most studies have not utilized sufficient methods to detect rule-breaking subjects. The purpose of this article is to bring to the attention of alcohol and other drug researchers issues involving deceptive participants. The review will suggest alcohol-specific as well as more general strategies to identify and thereby minimize enrollment of these deceptive participants. Specifically, we will identify strategies that are employed in different phases of human alcohol research and advance approaches that may be helpful to the field in reducing these contaminants. As a field, we need to be more proactive in identifying the deceptive participant even at the cost of more burdensome study enrollment. In light of the systemic nature and multipronged damage that this emerging pattern of deception inflicts on clinical research, it is imperative that we each assume greater responsibility for our role in mitigating this source of research contamination.