Prioritizing recruitment: the benefits to using a disease registry to recruit older adults with HIV and intersecting identities

ABSTRACT

The success of a study hinges on its recruitment procedures, however there is a paucity of papers focused on innovative recruitment strategies, especially as it relates to the recruitment and retention of marginalized populations. This paper aims to outline how consent-to-contact databases can be used as an effective tool for recruitment. First, we begin by describing the consent-to-contact databases we used. Then, we offer insight into how a consent-to-contact database was utilized to recruit Latino older adults with HIV participants for an interdisciplinary behavioral and physical health promotion intervention. We outline barriers and challenges to recruitment and research participation with a specific emphasis on the unique hurdles associated with recruiting and retaining racial/ethnic minority older adults with HIV in behavioral health studies. Finally, we provide final recommendations for future researchers interested in how to best employ this type of recruitment tool in their own research.

KEYWORDS:

• Recruitment
• older Latinos
• HIV
• health disparities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities under Grants R01 MD012610 and U54 MD002266.