Marketing approaches to improve recruitment and retention in clinical trials
This project aims to investigate how recruitment and retention in clinical trials can be improved by applying various approaches from marketing.
Duration: October 2023 - October 2026
Funder:
Joan Browne Legacy Fund
Partners:
Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit, School of Medicine
Centre for Health Innovation, Leadership and Learning (CHILL)
Key people:
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
This research relates to the following SDGs
Research summary
Randomised clinical trials are widely considered to be the gold standard for gleaning evidence for health interventions, yet they often struggle to reach their participant recruitment targets and, when they do, retention of trial participants to completion can be challenging.
Evidence suggests that clinical trials could benefit from implementing principles and techniques from marketing to address these challenges. Marketing used in this context seeks to understand participants’ perspectives, motivations and values in order to facilitate informed choices and design better trial experiences.
Research findings
Our scoping review of the current use of marketing strategies in clinical trials has revealed an almost exclusive reliance on marketing communications within trials, commonly advertisements on social media or posters in hospitals, clinics and GP surgeries. Our survey of the current practices of trial teams indicates adhoc and reactive use of marketing techniques that tend to focus on recruitment rather than retention. We aim to develop and evaluate a marketing toolkit of practical guidance that enables trial teams to apply a wider range of marketing ideas more systematically.
Further information
For more information please email Antgony Ndungu.
