Advancing the Science of Recruitment and Retention of Ethnically Diverse Populations

Abstract

We highlight several critical challenges that must be addressed to accelerate the advancement of the science on recruitment and retention of ethnically diverse older adults into health research. These include the relative lack of attention by researchers to methodological issues related to recruitment and retention of ethnically diverse populations and the inadequacy of funding to advance systematically this field. We describe strategies used by the Resource Centers on Minority Aging Research and other National Institute of Aging-funded programs to advance the science of recruitment of ethnically diverse older adults. Finally, we propose a set of broad recommendations designed to generate a body of evidence on successful methods of recruitment and retention of ethnically diverse populations in health research. To eliminate health disparities and better understand aging processes in ethnically diverse populations, much more research is needed on effective strategies for increasing minority enrollment in health research. Comparative effectiveness research on more intensive recruitment and retention methods, which are often needed for including diverse populations, will require dedicated funding and concerted efforts by investigators.

Developing Partnerships and Recruiting Dyads for a Prostate Cancer Informed Decision Making Program: Lessons Learned From a Community-Academic-Clinical Team

“…Napoles and Chadiha [27] recommend that investigators incorporate and evaluate multiple recruitment methods in their studies in order to advance the science on effective recruiting and retaining of racially and ethnically diverse groups into health-related research.…”

Reach and representativeness of ethnic minority women in the Health Is Power Study: a longitudinal analysis

“…Despite this greater emphasis on representing people from ethnic minority groups in research, relatively few reports exist that measure and report these factors in detail in clinical and behavioral research studies [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Reach represents not only the absolute number of participants-the "N"-but also the proportion of those recruited to those eligible to participate and the representativeness of the sample, not only at recruitment, but throughout the study [10].…”

“…Reduced representativeness of the target population affects the likelihood of results being useful for efforts at scaling up the research methodology for broad-based implementation. Recommendations suggest that studies should report information systematically documented by ethnicity, to compare how the study sample represents the population at recruitment and throughout the study, along with SES, gender, and age [7,21,31]. The goal of this study was to evaluate reach and representativeness in the Health Is Power (HIP) study by (1) evaluating recruitment and participation rates, (2) determining the degree to which the initial study sample represented the population demographically, and (3) determining the degree to which those who completed the intervention represented the original study sample.…”

Patient–provider relationship and perceived provider weight bias among American Indians and Alaska Natives

“…The available evidence suggests that provider bias may influence treatment of patients with obesity and that patients' perceived experiences of provider weight bias may undermine patient engagement. For example, several studies show that people with obesity have low rates of weightrelated counselling (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17), are less likely to undergo age-appropriate preventive cancer screenings (12)(13)(14)(15) and receive less time and less frequent intervention from medical providers in the clinical setting than patients without obesity (16,17). Among AI/ANs, weight bias in the context of health care has not been fully characterized.…”