Lessons from Prenatal Care Provider-Based Recruitment into the National Children’s Study

Abstract

In response to recruitment difficulties experienced by the National Children’s Study, alternatives to the door-to-door recruitment method were pilot tested. This report describes outcomes, successes, and challenges of recruiting women through prenatal care providers in Benton County, Arkansas, USA. Eligible women residing in 14 randomly selected geographic segments were recruited. Data were collected during pregnancy, at birth, and at 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 months postpartum. Participants were compared to non-enrolled eligible women through birth records. Of 6402 attempts to screen for address eligibility, 468 patients were potentially eligible. Of 221 eligible women approached to participate, 151 (68%) enrolled in the 21-year study. Enrolled women were similar to non-enrolled women in age, marital status, number of prenatal care visits, and gestational age and birth weight of the newborn. Women enrolled from public clinics were more likely to be Hispanic, lower educated, younger and unmarried than those enrolled from private clinics. Sampling geographic areas from historical birth records failed to produce expected equivalent number of births across segments. Enrollment of pregnant women from prenatal care providers was successful.

Breastfeeding in Infancy Is Associated with Body Mass Index in Adolescence: A Retrospective Cohort Study Comparing American Indians/Alaska Natives and Non-Hispanic Whites

“…Table 1 shows that retention rates over all waves of Add Health ranged from 71% to 79%, similar to rates in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 29 and higher than other longitudinal surveys with a 10-year follow-up. 30 Table 2 provides descriptive statistics of the two population samples.…”

Methods for a National Birth Cohort Study

“…The area-based sample design used in the National Children's Study (NCS) in 2009-2010 proved to be problematic and unsustainable as implemented. As a result, beginning in 2010 several variations of the initial design were tested or explored (Baker et al, 2014;Hirschfeld et al, 2011, Robbins et al, 2015Trasande et al, 2011). One of the tested designs involved sampling pregnant women directly via prenatal care providers, rather than sampling women via the geographic areas in which they lived.…”