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Assessment of Child Anthropometry in a Large Epidemiologic Study
Published on: February 2, 2017
Researchers' perspectives on pediatric obesity research participant recruitment
Yasha Parikh1,2, Maryann Mason3,4, Karen Williams5
1Central Michigan University College of Medicine, Mt Pleasant, MI, USA. Parik1ys@cmich.edu.
Insights
Recruiting for childhood obesity studies is challenging due to logistical, economic, and stigma-related barriers. Addressing these requires flexible scheduling, incentives, and community engagement to improve participation in vital pediatric obesity research.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric obesity research
- Clinical trial recruitment strategies
Background:
- Childhood obesity rates have tripled in recent decades, posing significant public health and economic challenges.
- Effective interventions are crucial, necessitating robust study recruitment, which is a persistent challenge, particularly in pediatric obesity research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify and understand the barriers encountered in recruiting participants for childhood obesity studies.
- To review and propose facilitators that can overcome these recruitment difficulties and enhance study enrollment.
Main Methods:
- Conducted interviews with 11 childhood obesity researchers who were contacted from a pool of 24.
- Employed a Grounded Theory approach for this exploratory study, analyzing transcribed interviews using content analysis.
- Utilized 28 codes for interview analysis by investigators YP and MM.
Main Results:
- Identified recruitment barriers including family/study logistics, economic factors, provider disinterest, invasive protocols, stigma, time constraints, lack of patient motivation, classroom groupthink, and participant weight status denial.
- Facilitators for enhanced recruitment include flexible scheduling (outside clinic hours), participant incentives, pre-study relationship building with communities/schools/clinics, highlighting patient benefits, and framing study focus on health rather than obesity.
Conclusions:
- Pediatric obesity researchers face a combination of general clinical research, pediatric-specific, and obesity-specific recruitment challenges.
- Awareness of these unique difficulties and the application of identified facilitators can improve recruitment efficiency and enrollment in pediatric obesity studies.
Background:
Childhood obesity prevalence has tripled over the last three decades. Pediatric obesity has important implications for both adult health as well as the United States economy. In order to combat pediatric obesity, exploratory studies are necessary to create effective interventions. Recruitment is an essential part of any study, and it has been challenging for all studies, especially pediatric obesity studies. The objective of this study was to understand barriers to pediatric obesity study recruitment and review facilitators to overcome recruitment difficulties.
Methods:
Twenty four childhood obesity researchers were contacted. Complete data for 11 researchers were obtained. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using content analysis. Grounded Theory methodological approach was used, as this was an exploratory study. Investigators YP and MM coded the interviews using 28 codes.
Results:
Barriers to recruitment included: family and study logistics, family economics, lack of provider interest, invasive protocols, stigma, time restraints of clinicians, lack of patient motivation/interest, groupthink of students in a classroom, and participants who do not accept his or her own weight status. Facilitators to enhance recruitment practices included accommodating participants outside of regular clinic hours, incentivizing participants, cultivating relationships with communities, schools and clinics prior to study recruitment, emphasizing benefits of a study for the patient, and shifting language to focus on health rather than obesity.
Conclusions:
Pediatric obesity researchers face many standard and some unique challenges to recruitment, reflecting challenges common to clinical research as well as some specific to pediatrics and some specific to obesity research. Both pediatric studies as well as obesity studies are an added challenge to the already-difficult task of general study recruitment. Our findings can be used to make researchers more aware of potential difficulties, approaches and on-going needs for enhancing recruitment and enrollment practices, and in turn if applied, may result in increased study efficiency.
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