IADR Abstract Archives
Implementing Effective Iowa Biorepository Recruitment Strategies to Facilitate Personalized Medicine
Objectives: To support the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), the University of Iowa College of Dentistry created a Dental Biorepository to collect medical and dental information from patients in addition to biospecimens (e.g., saliva for DNA, RNA, microbiome, and teeth, bone, tissue). Like in most research studies, one of the challenges is research subject recruitment, especially among moderate-to-severe dental cases from highly diverse dental clinics. Therefore, this work’s aim is to share our effective recruitment strategies for the facilitation of PMI at Iowa and beyond.
Methods:
We implemented a variety of clinic-specific recruitment strategies in June 2019. These include: (i) educating patients, families, and dental professionals that all College of Dentistry patients/ blood-related family members are eligible to participate, (ii) designing visually-appealing recruitment materials written at 9th grade reading level, (iii) focusing on consenting and collecting samples during clinic sessions and delaying data entry until after clinic, (iv) using the clinic database system to efficiently identify cases who have an upcoming appointment and mail them a personalized invitation letter weeks in advance of the upcoming appointment, and (v) discussing the informed consent document over the phone to reduce the in-person visit time to 10 minutes.
Results: From June 2019 through September 2019, there has been a 212% increase in the number of biospecimens collected, most of which are from moderate-to-severe cases. From June 2016 to October 2019, 1,883 individual subjects (836 males and 1,047 females) have consented and donated 2,028 biological specimens. We have extracted DNA from 90% of these samples, and they are available for future genetics and genomics work.
Conclusions: By considering the specific dental clinic when designing and implementing effective and efficient recruitment strategies, it will expeditiously progress the field of personalized medicine where data on medical, dental and genetics/genomics will be considered to improve diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and ultimately prevention.
Methods:
We implemented a variety of clinic-specific recruitment strategies in June 2019. These include: (i) educating patients, families, and dental professionals that all College of Dentistry patients/ blood-related family members are eligible to participate, (ii) designing visually-appealing recruitment materials written at 9th grade reading level, (iii) focusing on consenting and collecting samples during clinic sessions and delaying data entry until after clinic, (iv) using the clinic database system to efficiently identify cases who have an upcoming appointment and mail them a personalized invitation letter weeks in advance of the upcoming appointment, and (v) discussing the informed consent document over the phone to reduce the in-person visit time to 10 minutes.
Results: From June 2019 through September 2019, there has been a 212% increase in the number of biospecimens collected, most of which are from moderate-to-severe cases. From June 2016 to October 2019, 1,883 individual subjects (836 males and 1,047 females) have consented and donated 2,028 biological specimens. We have extracted DNA from 90% of these samples, and they are available for future genetics and genomics work.
Conclusions: By considering the specific dental clinic when designing and implementing effective and efficient recruitment strategies, it will expeditiously progress the field of personalized medicine where data on medical, dental and genetics/genomics will be considered to improve diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and ultimately prevention.