Risultati per: Studio REDUCE-IT e appropriatezza prescrittiva degli acidi grassi omega-3

Objectives
Researchers face numerous challenges when recruiting participants for health and social care research. This study reports on the challenges faced recruiting older adults for Being Your Best, a co-designed holistic intervention to manage and reduce frailty, and highlights lessons learnt amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design
A qualitative study design was used. Referrer interviews were conducted to explore the recruitment challenges faced by the frontline workers. An audit of the research participant (aged ≥65) database was also undertaken to evaluate the reasons for refusal to participate and withdrawal from the study.

Setting
Hospital emergency departments (EDs) and a home care provider in Melbourne, Australia.

Participants
Frontline workers and older adults.

Results
From May 2022 to June 2023, 71 referrals were received. Of those referrals, only 13 (18.3%) agreed to participate. Three participants withdrew immediately after baseline data collection, and the remaining 10 continued to participate in the programme. Reasons for older adult non-participation were (1) health issues (25.3%), (2) ineligibility (18.3%), (3) lack of interest (15.5%), (4) perceptions of being ‘too old’ (11.2%) and (5) perceptions of being too busy (5.6%). Of those participating, five were female and five were male. Eleven referrer interviews were conducted to explore challenges with recruitment, and three themes were generated after thematic analysis: (1) challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) characteristics of the programme and (3) health of older adults.

Conclusion
Despite using multiple strategies, recruitment was much lower than anticipated. The ED staff were at capacity associated with pandemic-related activities. While EDs are important sources of participants for research, they were not suitable recruitment sites at the time of this study, due to COVID-19-related challenges. Programme screening characteristics and researchers’ inability to develop rapport with potential participants also contributed to low recruitment numbers.

Trial registration number
ACTRN12620000533998; Pre-results.

People with increased polygenic risk scores for higher body mass index (BMI) would need to walk about 2300 more steps each day to have the same risk of obesity as those with lower scores, a recent retrospective study in JAMA Network Open found. Polygenic risk scores reflect the risk of disease determined by many variants in a person’s DNA. The results suggest that exercise recommendations that don’t take genetic predispositions for obesity into account might underestimate the amount of activity individuals might need to reduce their risk, the researchers noted.