Recruitment outcomes, challenges and lessons learned: the Healthy Communities Study

The Healthy Communities Study (HCS) was a national study of community programs and policies that aimed to address childhood obesity; it necessitated recruitment of a large sample of children from communities throughout the United States.

The HCS aimed to complete visits with an average of 45 children and 12 key informants from at least 120 communities, diverse with respect to region of the country, urbanicity, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity and intensity of community programs and policies that aim to address childhood obesity.

Purchased address lists were utilized to select households for recruitment during Wave 1 of the study, and recruitment of families through schools was employed for Wave 2.

The HCS successfully obtained approval from 149 school districts and 478 schools in 130 communities, recruited 5138 families, and interviewed 1421 key informants to allow for characterization of overall intensity of obesity prevention/treatment efforts in each community.

Lessons learned are presented. Future studies should plan for inclusion of the following in development of recruitment strategies: literature review, formative research, pilot testing, and ongoing monitoring and adjustment.