To end disease tomorrow, begin with trials today: Digital strategies for increased awareness of a clinical trials finder

The Recruitment Innovation Center: Developing novel, person-centered strategies for clinical trial recruitment and retention

Clinical trials continue to face significant challenges in participant recruitment and retention. The Recruitment Innovation Center (RIC), part of the Trial Innovation Network (TIN), has been funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health to develop innovative strategies and technologies to enhance participant engagement in all stages of multicenter clinical trials. In collaboration with investigator teams and liaisons at Clinical and Translational Science Award institutions, the RIC is charged with the mission to design, field-test, and refine novel resources in the context of individual clinical trials. These innovations are disseminated via newsletters, publications, a virtual toolbox on the TIN website, and RIC-hosted collaboration webinars. The RIC has designed, implemented, and promised customized recruitment support for 173 studies across many diverse disease areas. This support has incorporated site feasibility assessments, community input sessions, recruitment materials recommendations, social media campaigns, and an array of study-specific suggestions. The RIC’s goal is to evaluate the efficacy of these resources and provide access to all investigating teams, so that more trials can be completed on time, within budget, with diverse participation, and with enough accrual to power statistical analyses and make substantive contributions to the advancement of healthcare.

Opening doors to clinical trial participation among Hispanics: Lessons learned from the Spanish translation of ResearchMatch

Introduction:

Clinical trial participation among US Hispanics remains low, despite a significant effort by research institutions nationwide. ResearchMatch, a national online platform, has matched 113,372 individuals interested in participating in research with studies conducted by 8778 researchers. To increase accessibility to Spanish speakers, we translated the ResearchMatch platform into Spanish by implementing tenets of health literacy and respecting linguistic and cultural diversity across the US Hispanic population. We describe this multiphase process, preliminary results, and lessons learned.

Methods:

Translation of the ResearchMatch site consisted of several activities including: (1) improving the English language site’s reading level, removing jargon, and using plain language; (2) obtaining a professional Spanish translation of the site and incorporating iterative revisions by a panel of bilingual community members from diverse Hispanic backgrounds; (3) technical development and launch; and (4) initial promotion.

Results:

The Spanish language version was launched in August 2018, after 11 months of development. Community input improved the initial translation, and early registration and use by researchers demonstrate the utility of Spanish ResearchMatch in engaging Hispanics. Over 12,500 volunteers in ResearchMatch self-identify as Hispanic (8.5%). From August 2018 to March 2020, 162 volunteers registered through the Spanish language version of ResearchMatch, and over 500 new and existing volunteers have registered a preference to receive messages about studies in Spanish.

Conclusion:

By applying the principles of health literacy and cultural competence, we developed a Spanish language translation of ResearchMatch. Our multiphase approach to translation included key principles of community engagement that should prove informative to other multilingual web-based platforms.