Facebook Recruitment for Children with Advanced Cancer and Their Parents: Lessons from a Web-based Pediatric...

Area of Science:

• Palliative Care
• Digital Health
• Clinical Trial Recruitment

Background:

• Participant recruitment for pediatric palliative intervention studies presents significant challenges for researchers.
• Digital recruitment strategies offer a promising solution to overcome these barriers in pediatric palliative care clinical trials.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe Facebook recruitment procedures for a pediatric palliative intervention randomized clinical trial targeting children with cancer and their parents.
• To report recruitment results from using Facebook advertisements for this specific pediatric population.
• To discuss successful strategies for recruiting pediatric populations with serious illnesses via social media platforms.

Main Methods:

• Utilized Facebook advertisements to recruit children (aged 7-17) with advanced cancer and their parents for a web-based legacy intervention.
• Conducted recruitment between 2015 and 2018.
• Enrolled 150 child-parent dyads (N=300) into the study.

Main Results:

• Successfully enrolled 150 child-parent dyads using Facebook advertisements.
• Demonstrated the feasibility of recruiting pediatric populations with life-threatening conditions via social media.
• Facebook advertisements proved to be an effective tool for accessing and enrolling participants.

Conclusions:

• Facebook advertisements can be a successful strategy for recruiting pediatric populations with serious illnesses into clinical trials.
• Further research should explore innovative social media recruitment strategies for other patient populations and their caregivers.
• Advancing palliative care science can be supported by leveraging novel digital recruitment methods.