The UC Davis ADRC Cohort Study aimed to use established marketing techniques to recruit African Americans to participate in research and increase the center’s social media presence

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundThe UC Davis ADRC Cohort Study aimed to use established marketing techniques to recruit African Americans to participate in research and increase the center’s social media presence. African American’s have been historically excluded from research at the same time they are disproportionately impacted by Alzheimer’s Disease. Current recruitment best practices for engaging underrepresented groups in research includes community outreach events, flyers, and recruitment in academic or clinical settings. Contemporary social media marketing methods allow us to reach very specific demographics, which can be helpful to find and recruit groups typically underrepresented in researchMethodWe hired a marketing firm to run a market analysis to identify what our target audience looked like. We developed ad content with people’s motivations for participating in mind. The ads included Alzheimer’s disease awareness, testimonial interviews from research participants, information on the center, or education on dementia. The campaign was a combination of ads through Facebook, google ads, twitter, Instagram, and yahoo ads. We supplemented our advertising with Facebook posts on the ADRC page to create a buzz of conversation around the videos. The ads when clicked on let to the ADC website, YouTube channel, Facebook page, or Study pages where people could sign up to be contacted for recruitment.ResultBecause of the campaign, our ADRC Facebook followers increased by 8%. The data on the participant recruitment funnel was 102 clicks to visit the ADRC recruitment webpage from Facebook Ads; 27 people signed up via study page; 7 were ineligible (usually no study partner); 6 were information seekers (adult children or <65yrs); and 13 were enrolled. The 13 participants completed all study visits that year. This direct marketing campaign netted over half of the annual 20 replacement volunteers needed by the intensive ADRC cohort study that usually takes a full‐time staff person 6‐8 months to recruit. By comparison, direct marketing/recruitment was incredibly efficient.ConclusionResearch centers may benefit from integrating common marketing methods for recruitment of underrepresented groups. There were some difficulties implementing the marketing plan with the IRB and research Center model. More research can be done to evaluate effective strategies for recruiting diverse participants.