Recruiting people for health research is more important than ever. But with face-to-face activities limited during the COVID-19 pandemic, the All of Us Research Program turned to virtual tools to bring new participants on board.
Like the rest of the nation, All of Us — a National Institutes of Health program that is working to collect health data on 1 million people in the U.S.—paused its in-person activities in March 2020. The program turned online to keep recruiting and connecting with its hundreds of thousands of participants.The traveling All of Us Journey Exhibit switched to virtual presentations, for example, while All of Us partner organizations shifted to virtual cooking demos, dance parties and games.
All of Us also launched a few pilot initiatives to help people safely engage, such as one that lets program participants share saliva samples via mail rather than visiting a medical site. To reach people with limited access to computers or the internet, All of Us used computer-assisted telephone interviewing, commonly known as CATI, to conduct interviews via phone and help people enroll in the program for the first time.
In recent months, some in-person enrollment sites have reopened, but the program plans to keep some of the new methods.
For more, visit www.joinallofus.org.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
