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Facebook Recruitment for Children with Advanced Cancer and Their Parents: Lessons from a Web-based Pediatric
Eunji Cho1, Mary Jo Gilmer1,2, Debra L Friedman3
1School of Nursing, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
Insights
Recruiting for pediatric palliative care studies is hard. Using Facebook ads successfully enrolled 150 children with cancer and parents in a web-based intervention, showing social media
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.
Abstract:
Participant recruitment for pediatric palliative intervention studies is a chronic challenge for researchers. Digital recruitment strategies, or digital technology-assisted recruitment methods used to remotely reach and enroll research subjects, can help address these recruitment challenges for pediatric palliative care clinical trials. This study (a) describes Facebook recruitment procedures targeting children with cancer and their parents for a pediatric palliative intervention randomized clinical trial, (b) reports recruitment results, and (c) discusses successful strategies to recruit pediatric populations via Facebook advertisements. Researchers used Facebook advertisements to recruit children with advanced cancer (aged 7 to 17 years) for a web-based legacy intervention. Between years 2015 and 2018, our research team enrolled 150 child-parent dyads (N= 300) to participate in the web-based legacy program. Results suggest that Facebook advertisements can be a successful tool to access and recruit pediatric populations with life-threatening conditions. Further research is needed to determine how innovative social-media recruitment strategies could be used in other populations of patients with serious illnesses and their caregivers to further advance the science in palliative care.
