Identifying recruitment strategies to improve the reach of evidence-based health promotion, disease prevention, and disease self-management interventions: a scoping review

Paul Estabrooks ^1* Mickey Bolyard ¹ Tallie Casucci ¹ Josh Christensen ¹ Bryan Gibson ² Caitlin Golden ³ Jennie Hill ¹ Linnea Horvath ¹ Shinduk Lee ⁴ Ellen Maxfield ⁵ Mary M McFarland ¹ James Lorenz Merle ¹ Tzeyu Michaud ^6,7 Megan Miller ¹ Emiliane Pereira ⁸ Chelsey Schlecter ¹ Sara Simonsen ¹ David W. Wetter ¹ Amy Locke ¹

• ¹ The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
• ² Department of Biomedical Informatics, School of Medicine, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
• ³ Department of Population Health Sciences, School of Medicine, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
• ⁴ College of Nursing, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
• ⁵ University of Utah Osher Center for Integrative Health, Salt Lake City, United States
• ⁶ Department of Health Promotion, College of Public Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska, United States
• ⁷ Center for Reducing Health Disparities, College of Public Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska, United States
• ⁸ University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska, United States

Improving the reach of existing lifestyle change interventions in community or clinical settings can significantly improve public health. However, little is known about the overall success of recruitment strategies or the specification of strategy components including the details of how, through which channel and by who the recruitment strategies are enacted.We conducted a scoping review with guidance from the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis. We adhered to the PRISMA-S and PRISMA-ScR guidelines for reporting literature searches and scoping reviews. Our eligibility criteria included studies that reported recruitment strategies to improve reach (enrollment number, participation rate, and representativeness) of lifestyle interventions for children or adults. Recruitment strategies for non-lifestyle interventions, such as pharmaceutical trials, were excluded. Databases included Medline (Ovid), Embase (embase.com), CINAHL Complete (Ebscohost), APA PsycINFO (Ebscohost), and Dissertation and Theses Global (ProQuest). Database search results were retrieved on March 2-3, 2023.From a total of 9,712 references, 98 studies were included . Eight studies [2,30,36,47,62,63,79,95] compared recruitment strategies using a randomized controlled trial and 90 studies were evaluations/quasi-experiments that reported on reach. Thirty-two percent of the studies utilizing more than one recruitment strategy. The average reach, operationalized as participation rate, of the primary strategy (n=15 defined strategies) being tested ranged from 3% to 41%. Further, participation rates ranged across studies that focused on children (43%), adults (25%), and older adults (16%). Most included studies did not report (1) strategy timing and dose, (2) theoretical basis, or (3) potential mechanisms of improved reach. Finally, differences in how the denominator was operationalized reduced confidence in comparing across strategies.More clarity is needed when reporting on specific strategies used to improve the reach of lifestyle interventions. Suggestions include guidance on how to consistently define a denominator of eligible participants exposed to recruitment strategies. Furthermore, the use of theoretical approaches and testing of potential mechanisms of effect are needed to be included in future studies to advance the science of improving lifestyle intervention reach. manuscript. No new data were generated. However, the coding framework and data extraction templates used during the review are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.