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Table 3 Intervention INC recruitment strategies and results

From: Key recruitment and retention strategies for a pilot web-based intervention to decrease obesity risk among minority youth

Strategy

Challenge(s)

Solution(s)

Obtained lists of eligible patients

• Built upon existing partnerships with community clinics to obtain potential study participants

• Partnered with FQHC to obtain potential study participants

• Difficulty receiving approvals to obtain lists in secure way

• Difficulty creating broad enough eligibility criteria to identify patients

• Difficulty with accurate databases to identify patients

• Unable to obtain patient list from FQHC in timely manner due to privacy concerns

• Additional community outreach—tabled at community events, school events, and community clinics locations

• Provided nutritional education

• Provided food samples

• Partnered with community programs and institutions—elementary/junior high schools, public parks, YMCA

Contacted eligible patients with trained study staff (including bilingual study staff)

• Sent letters with study information to potential participants from patient lists (selected based on BMI measure from last medical visit) and co-signed by clinic physician

• Cold called from patient lists

• Difficulty in reaching potential participants from community clinic lists due to outdated contact information

• Unable to recruit participants within target time frames

• Frequent no-shows and cancelations of baseline visits

• Parents provided inaccurate estimates of child’s height and weight

• Difficulty recruiting children in overweight/obese BMI percentile categories

• Expanded BMI eligibility criteria

• Conducted snowball recruitment—sought referrals from parental participants

• Extended recruitment period

• Required potential participants’ verbal confirmation for 1- and 3-day confirmation

• Enhanced communication, i.e., texting more frequently

• Provided a family-friendly experience

• Positive interactions with study staff

• Additional children and family members attended study visits

• Not enough snacks for additional people

• Initially, no methods of entertaining/distracting additional kids

• Additional people in the room distracted parents/kids during data collection

• Provided entertainment for other siblings, i.e., toys, drawing

• Provided access to wifi (to use on personal devices) for older siblings/other adults

• Ensured availability of larger meeting space or multiple spaces if multiple people came

• Bought additional supplies

• Recruited in the summer when families have more time

• Slow recruitment

• Extended recruitment into the fall and took advantage of back-to-school events and fall festivals

• Extended available times for data collection sections to include after-school hours and evenings

• Flyered in targeted areas of Harlem (included bilingual study staff, always in pairs)

• Community push-back

• Flyers frequently torn down

• Increased time spent on community flyering/increase number of flyers posted

• More strategic flyering (e.g., posted in local businesses with their approval, distributed flyers to interested local organizations such as churches, clinics)

• Convenient study location centrally located in East Harlem neighborhood and flexible study visit dates/times (included weekends and evenings)

• Unanticipated issues with allowing study participants to enter building (with security)

• Enhanced communication with building security

• Requested parents to text us directly upon arrival and did not rely on security to call study staff

Incentives

• Up to $70 in gift cards for the parents/guardians for completing study visit

• Up to $65 in gift cards for children completing study visits

• $100 gift card raffle entry for dyad participants that completed all study components

• Variety of gift cards to choose from: Aldi, Wholefoods, Modell’s, Target

  

Unified communication system

• Used Google Voice number as single study phone and texting line

• Single Hunter College email address accessible to all study staff

• Used Google calendar as central scheduling platform

• Coordinated monitoring of the study line and email (especially with Spanish-speaking participants)

• Coordinated availability of study staff to moderate study visit (originally the person who made contact would also be moderator, but changed to whoever was available to moderator session)

• Additional staff (especially Spanish-speaking) added to the study team

• Standardized monitoring/scheduling procedure was incorporated