(257) Effectiveness of Awareness/Recruitment Activities for Pregnancy Registries

Background: Recruitment is one of the greatest challenges facing pregnancy registries. The effectiveness of different methods for promoting registry awareness is not well understood and is evolving with the accessibility of technology as well as acceptance of social media and its applications.

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of different awareness/recruitment activities for pregnancy registries.

Methods: We reviewed recruitment activities and metrics for enrolling pregnancy registries at a CRO. We pooled all enrolled participants across registries and examined their self-reported referral sources. We further examined 2 registries for which enrollment started in early 2023 and pregnancy-specific social media campaign started mid-2023 to compare enrollment rates before and during the campaigns. These campaigns involved emails, native ads, and community posts targeting specific users of two popular online resources for pregnant individuals.

Results: We identified 8 actively enrolling pregnancy registries. For these, start of enrollment ranged from March 2019 to February 2023; target sample sizes ranged from 728 to 1,731; the number of internal cohorts ranged from 2 to 5; and the target sample size per cohort ranged from 265 to 409. As of 30Jan2024, duration of enrollment ranged from 7 to 60 months; total enrollment ranged from 18 to 332 participants; and enrollment rate ranged from 0.5 to 12 participants per month. Among the 552 participants enrolled across all registries, top referral sources were: pregnancy-specific social media, 55.6%; online search, 11.6%; HCP referral, 9.4%; and online advertisement, 5.6%. Other referral sources included websites (CRO, sponsor, registry, FDA), other social media, email, hardcopy mail, prescribing information, and sponsor safety groups. As of 30Jan2024, the 2 registries that we further examined had been enrolling for 12 months. Prior to implementation of pregnancy-specific social media campaigns, these registries enrolled 0 participants. During the campaigns, 45 participants were enrolled in the registries; average enrollment rate for the duration of the campaigns were 3.0 and 3.6 participants per month with monthly enrollment ranging from 1 to 8 participants.

Conclusions: Pregnancy-specific social media campaigns are effective tools for recruiting eligible participants to pregnancy registries. Across 8 actively enrolling registries, these campaigns generated more enrollments than any other recruitment activity and accounted for more than half of all registry enrollments.