Comparison of Recruitment Efforts Targeted at Primary Care Physicians versus the Community At Large for Participation in Alzheimer's Disease Clinical Trials

Inefficient and delayed recruitment into clinical trials in Alzheimer's disease are major obstacles impeding progress in the discovery of more effective therapeutic strategies to combat this disease. Despite widespread recognition of this problem, limited empirical data demonstrating the effectiveness of specific recruitment strategies are available to guide recruitment endeavors. The present study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of recruitment efforts targeting either the primary care health professionals (PCP) or patients and families with a community grass-roots outreach event (COE). The primary outcome measure was actual study recruitment and participation in the four months post-intervention. No research subjects were recruited from the PCP intervention, while 69 subjects were recruited into clinical studies from the COE activity (0% vs. 28%, P