Yeah, so there are lots of strategies, not just being employed in the Health and Aging Brain Study, that a lot of clinical trials and a lot of studies have really attempted to take up this mantle. So the first strategy is building trust, right? And I know that seems intuitive, but what we have noticed is that we would request of participants, but we didn’t establish a connection. We weren’t thinking about giving anything back to them...
Yeah, so there are lots of strategies, not just being employed in the Health and Aging Brain Study, that a lot of clinical trials and a lot of studies have really attempted to take up this mantle. So the first strategy is building trust, right? And I know that seems intuitive, but what we have noticed is that we would request of participants, but we didn’t establish a connection. We weren’t thinking about giving anything back to them. We were taking information. We were taking their biological fluids, and then we were leaving, and then they were left with nothing to show for it. So building trust with the communities, reaching out to community partners that already have representation of the people that we’re trying to recruit in our studies, we have definitely shown has improved representation overall. And so we’re talking about faith-based organizations, sorority and fraternity-like organizations. A lot of these organizations that already have the representation in the population that is needed and that is the most at risk for these diseases, we’re building trust with them. And then not only building trust, as I alluded to earlier, like giving them something back. Some people want to know what their health record is. Somebody wants to know what are the actual outcomes of this trial that they’re participating in. So having a platform, having a network in which they are getting something out of it has also been shown to really, really be beneficial. Incentivizing them as well too. People love to be incentivized, whether it’s financially, whether it’s recruiting other family members. Because if I have a family history, if I now know that my family partner can also get enrolled in this clinical trial, we’ve shown that that has also had a benefit. So just kind of building community has really, really been helpful as well, too. And then we take a shift into the digital age, right? So there are ways in which we can creatively track cognitive decline using apps and games, and then using that as an enrollment strategy. So if we are setting up a platform in which they can play like these mind games, right, and they can track their progress over time, and then we notice that there is a shift, then we can intentionally reach out to them. So instead of having the patient come to our clinical trial, we actually reach out to them. We suggest that they may see some benefit enrolling in this clinical trial. So pretty much alleviating the burden on the patient, making it as easy as possible, and actually making it something that they don’t have to think about. There are other alternate strategies of how we can recruit patients so we can go into primary care settings. So if you’re already there seeing your primary care doctor for whatever condition and then you get asked on the spot, well, hey, would you like to participate in this trial? Again, just the idea of just alleviating burden, making it as easy as possible for the patients to become enrolled. And then also having staff that resonate with them, that look like them, that can speak culturally to some of the concerns that they may have has also been some very vital recruitment strategies because a lot of it is mistrust. A lot of it is historical and a lot of it, some of it may not all still be true, right? So if you see someone who looks like you, who can speak to your needs, who speaks to your concerns and actually can explain with compassion what those benefits are, we’ve also shown that having just that increased patient researcher contact, increasing the time of those interviews has also been shown to make sure that people not only enroll in the study, but then remain enrolled.
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