Comparison of recruitment efforts targeted at primary care physicians versus the community at large for participation in Alzheimer disease clinical trials

Inefficient and delayed recruitment into clinical trials in Alzheimer disease are major obstacles impeding progress in the discovery of more effective therapeutic strategies to combat this disease. Despite widespread recognition of this problem, limited empirical data demonstrating the effectiveness of specific recruitment strategies are available to guide recruitment endeavors. This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of recruitment efforts targeting either the primary care health professionals (PCPs) or patients and families with a community grass-roots outreach event. The primary outcome measure was actual study recruitment and participation in the 4 months postintervention. No research subjects were recruited from the PCP intervention, whereas 69 subjects were recruited into clinical studies from the community grass-roots outreach event activity (0% vs. 28%, P<0.0001, Fisher exact test). Barriers to recruitment success in the PCP arm included a perception of perceived harm to subjects from research participation and fear of losing patients through clinical research participation. Our results suggest that outreach efforts directed at the potential study subject/caregiver are not only cost-effective but are able to easily accomplish the desired result of direct recruitment into clinical research studies.