Abstract
There is a paucity of data on African Americans in community-based research secondary to difficulties in recruitment. These challenges include transportation, outreach barriers, fear and mistrust of researchers, lack of knowledge about disorder/issue under study, and lack of incentives. We hypothesized that we could improve recruitment in rural African American women by engaging community centers such as churches, community health centers, and doctor's offices.
Over a 1 month period, we sought to recruit 40 women for a community based research project with a primary outcome of increasing activity in rural African American women (45-70 years old) with knee pain. The outlets used to recruit these women included: five churches with a community liaison, many primary care physicians' offices, and a newspaper ad. In 1 month, 67 women expressed interest in our program by initiating contact. Of those 67 women, 42 were eligible and 37 were enrolled. Of the 42 eligible women, 24 were recruited from churches, 11 through word of mouth, 3 from physicians' offices, and 3 from the newspaper ad.
Lack of literature on how to recruit in rural African American communities is a significant barrier to research participation among African Americans. In this project, we provide a reproducible recruitment process for engaging rural African American women in community based research. While our primary focus was knee pain, this recruitment process can easily be translated into other areas of community based research including cancer and cardiovascular disease among others.
Citation Format: Michelle Scott, Tamara Huff, Monica Albertie, Gerardo Colon-Otero. Recruitment methods for engaging rural African American populations in community-based research. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Eighth AACR Conference on The Science of Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; Nov 13-16, 2015; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2016;25(3 Suppl):Abstract nr A27.
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