Emailing potential participants is a powerfully effective approach for precision medicine research recruitment, suggests a poster abstract presented at the Association of VA Hematology/Oncology (AVAHO) Annual Meeting. 

“Access to clinical trials and other research opportunities is important to discovering new disease treatments and better ways to detect, diagnose, and reduce disease risk,” wrote presenter Maren Scheuner, MD, MPH, acting executive director for genomic medicine at the Department of Veterans Affairs. “The WISDOM (Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of risk) Study is a multi-site, pragmatic trial with web-based participation based at the University of California at San Francisco that aims to move breast cancer screening away from its current one-size-fits-all approach to one that is personalized based on each woman’s individual risk.” 

The study evaluated the performance of a hub-and-spoke research recruitment model: the San Francisco VA Medical Center served as the center, and six eligible VA facilities served as recruitment sites. Sites granted the research team permission to email eligible patients about the WISDOM Study. The analysis focused on enrollment trends before and after the email was sent. 

Over the course of a single month, 27,061 VA patients were emailed about WISDOM Study recruitment. 

“Prior to the VA emailing, an average of 22 women per week consented to participating in the WISDOM Study, and none were veterans,” Dr Scheuner wrote. “After the first month of the VA emailing, an average of 186 women per week consented — a 7.5-fold increase.” 

The study found that 81% of the women who registered for the WISDOM study after the email was sent heard about the opportunity through the VA. 

“Our results demonstrate this is a feasible approach for precision medicine research, a growing area of research in VA and at academic affiliates,” Dr Scheuner concluded. 

Reference:

Scheuner M. Successful recruitment of VA patients in precision medicine research through passive recruitment efforts. Abstract presented at Association of VA Hematology/Oncology (AVAHO) Annual Meeting; September 24-26, 2021.