Is recruitment a strategic engagement objective?

[Anne]

As we continue to provide feedback on your assignments, I see the theme of recruitment being mentioned as a core theme and objective in some of your planning…What do people think?  Do you consider trial recruitment (and its outcomes) a key engagement objective?

Why or why not?

Share your opinion!!!

 

Topic

[Erica]

I do  not consider recruitment  as a key engagement outcome,

I understand and completely agree that engagement is beyond participant recruitment, however when it comes to Monitoring and Evaluation issues at least recruitment is something that can give us numbers, or can be used as an indicator.

At times we organize engagement activities like a community meeting or event to raise awareness on a trial, we speak, provide leaflets etc, but at the end of the day is not easy to measure and  we are even not sure how many people read and understand the leaflets unless we  use other ways of evaluation  may be administering a short questionnaire before and after.   Additionally just like Charles mentioned in most projects serious community engagement is done around recruitment and that is when the money for outreach activities is released to ensure that we get the desired numbers.

I guess is possible to change this perception but it needs more effort to get the PIs and other scientists understand that community engagement is an ongoing process with or with out recruitment.

[Anonymous]

This is such an interesting conversation. It picks up on a theme that Clever mentioned on another thread, that stakeholder engagement can be “top down” engagement. I took that statement to mean that research teams only seek community engagement on specific topics. When researchers are coming to the community with an agenda this can be part of why there is a perception that stakeholder engagement = recruitment.

Is there a way to change this perception so that engagement = acceptable, responsive research?

[Anne]

Yes, engagement can indirectly result in better recruitment  — but engagement is much broader and not just aimed at trial conduct. Ultimately, GPP is about ensuring that the larger research agenda is acceptable and responsive to community needs, as well as increasing the likelihood of generating meaningful and sustainable results. And stakeholders can provide input on all of the GPP topics areas and all stages of the research. The HVTN 505 case study that appears in Lesson 7  even illustrates how a research team incorporated significant inputs from stakeholders that impacted design and conduct of the research during the actual trial!

 

[Alice]

I do agree  of recruitment and outcomes  being the key objective of a trial process. How ever Community engagement is wider than participant recruitment, though Participant recruitment is the focus of all the engagement activities.

[Nozipho Mirranda Mhlongo]

I think that the most important thing before recruitment should be community assessment, which includes identifying stakeholders in the community. Once this has been done, then stakeholder engagement and community sensitization can be done before recruitment.

[Anne]

Thanks for that honest reflection, Charles. It is tough when you really think of the day-to-day realities on the ground for researchers. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with recruitment, when it’s the primary focus with the community, it can be inefficient and even costly in the longer-term. If the focus is on building trust and sustaining relationships, then the broader culture and community genuinely supports and champions the research and its benefits…..and then everyone naturally wants to be part of the process….

[Charles]

I do not consider recruitment as the  as the core theme and objective of stakeholder engagement but I can understand where most of us are coming from; In most sites or at least in our site community engagement has always been not been given the priority it deserves. What usually happens is that when a protocol is being developed scientists who have the say in protocol management will be preoccupied with the science and budgets. By the time version 1.0 of the protocol is released priority becomes the regulatory review process. The next thing will be to ask the community engagement team to develop a recruitment SOP and the pressure move to the community and get potential study participants for screening. It is therefore understandable why people  confuse the two. This training has described Community Engagement as the process of identifying, educating and involving critical stakeholders ( which includes potential study participants) before, during and after the trial.

 

 

 

 

[Kagisho Baepayne]

Recruitment is key in any trial but i think it is not a key engagement objective. before we can recruit we have to engage the different stakeholders. though we consider trial participants as stakeholder we do not starts with them. when it comes to outcomes i think trial outcomes becomes key objective because if we do not handle trial outcomes accordingly, either Favourable or unfavourable they may affect how we conduct trial in the community and support we have.

[Author]

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