Harvard Cooperative Program on Aging for Researchers

Facilitated Subject Recruitment through the Harvard Cooperative Program on Aging

Subject recruitment through the Harvard Cooperative Program on Aging is funded through three grants:  the Research Nursing Home Grant at the Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife, the Harvard Older Americans Independence Center and the Massachusetts Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Research projects funded through these grants use the resources of the recruitment core with no charge to individual teams. Investigtors with research funded outside of these grants may use this resource for a small fee. In the past 15 years, researchers at more than 50 Boston area research institutions have used HCPOA resources to recruit older participants for more than 350 research studies.

Among the services provided by the Harvard Cooperative Program on Aging are:

1. Assistance in creation of an outreach and recruitment plan for research proposals that
   
   • Achieves adequate representation of women & minorities*
   • Anticipates the extent and cost of recruitment based on factors such as the following;
     Level of Intrusiveness**
     Cohort size
     Target population, including age, gender and race
     Incidence of study cohort characteristics -- i.e., Parkinson's, memory loss
     Exclusionary criteria
     Stipend
     Preparedness to recruit non-English speaking participants
2. Direct mail service of study materials to members of a registry (Harvard Cooperative Program on Aging) -  1,200 well-characterized members living in the Greater Boston area. Ninety-one percent are 65 and older, 45 percent are 71-80, and 33 percent 81-90.  Racial and ethnic demographics are available upon request. Study information is mailed to potentially eligible Registry members screened to meet the research study criteria. Members contact research study teams directly if interested in participating. This direct mail service is provide for a fee of $3 per each potentially qualified Registry Member. This includes a complimentary listing for three issues (one year) in the "Research Studies" section of the HCPOA Newsletter, distributed to more than 9,500 older adults and the agencies serving them.
3. Subject recruitment through listing in the Harvard Cooperative Program on Aging Newsletter, a publication distributed three times per year to more than 9,500 older adults and the agencies serving them. The newsletter features a "Research Studies" section, with an average of 31 studies listed per issue. The fee for a year (three issues) is $100.
4. Facilitated outreach, including:
   1. Dissemination of study related articles to newsletters of senior organizations, and popular press newspapers in all neighborhoods of Boston.
   2. Posting of flyers about the study at locations in Boston, including senior housing sites, neighborhood health centers, health clubs, schools, etc., many in minority neighborhoods of Boston.
   3. Access to health-care agencies serving minority groups in Boston for the purpose of targeted recruitment.

For additional information about these resources, contact:
Marcie Freeman, M.Ed., Director, Outreach and Recruitment 
freeman@hsl.harvard.edu   |   617-971-5315 

To Download Subject Request Forms for Researchers wishing to use the resources of the Harvard Cooperative Program on Aging:
Please download all 5 documents.
1. How To
2. Request Form
3. Subject Health Questionnaire
4. Medication List
5. Instructions for Publications

* Complies with NIH Guidelines on the Inclusion of Women and Minorities as Subjects in Clinical Research as published in the Federal Register of March 9, 1994 (59 FR 11146-11151) based on the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993m PL 103-43
**Factors Influencing Subject Willingness to Participate in Clinical Gerontological Research. R. Rosenberg, M. Gagnon, P. Gismondi-Murphy, D. Kiel, WL Ooi, LA Lipsitz. Aging: Clinical and Experimental Research, December, 1996.