Recruitment strategies in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial: the first six years

The Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial has a total enrollment goal of almost 150,000 participants. These participants are being recruited at ten screening centers across the United States. All screening centers tested recruitment methodologies during a 1-year pilot phase. The main phase of recruitment was planned to take place over a 3-year period. The majority of participants are being recruited during the main phase of the study. Each of the screening centers tailors recruitment to its individual catchment area. Recruitment strategies in the PLCO trial are described. As the trial began, several protocol changes were made to help to increase enrollment. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) initiated recruitment efforts at the national level. The individual screening centers describe some of the specific recruitment experiences encountered. As the study progressed, the NCI implemented special initiatives to increase the enrollment of minority participants.

Design and evolution of the data management systems in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial

This paper describes the design and evolution of the data management systems developed in support of the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial. These systems span platforms from stand-alone computers to distributed systems on local area networks to mainframes. Allowing all of these systems to share appropriate information electronically introduces integration, synchronization, testing, and support challenges. For each platform, applications were developed to handle data entry, editing, trial management, reporting, telecommunications, and data sharing. Approaches to issues such as level of data access, integration with other, existing applications, and handling the expansion of the protocol are discussed.