Recruitment, enrollment and retention of young black men for HIV prevention research: experiences from The 411 for Safe Text project.
OBJECTIVE
There is abundant evidence of the HIV crisis in the black community, yet African Americans-and African American men in particular-are consistently under-represented in research on HIV prevention. The purpose of this paper is to describe the methods used to recruit and retain young black men in Philadelphia for an HIV prevention intervention.


METHODS
We formed a partnership between community members, Media Education Entertainment (MEE) Productions, Inc., and academic researchers of the Colorado School of Public Health (CSPH). Recognizing the core principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR), face-to-face recruitment was first conducted by MEE with the assistance of their community partners; subsequent enrollment and data collection were conducted over the telephone by staff in Colorado.


RESULTS
We enrolled 58% of the young black men recruited, retained 77% of the young men for a follow-up survey at three months, and 65% of the initial enrollees were retained for the six-month follow-up survey. Enrollment staff in Colorado reported initial challenges because of time elapse between recruitment and enrollment as well as participants' unfamiliarity with the enrollment staff. Subsequently, MEE recruitment staff emphasized the telephone area code and specific names of Colorado enrollment staff who would call.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results demonstrate the importance of the community-academic partnership formed and adherence to the principles of CBPR in carrying out this work. Despite challenges in recruitment of racially and ethnically diverse participants for research, we successfully recruited, enrolled, and retained young black men in an HIV prevention program.
Fortune
Thierry
T
MEE Productions, Inc., 340 North 12th Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19107, USA. tfortune@meeproductions.com
Wright
Erin
E
Juzang
Ivan
I
Bull
Sheana
S
D000293:Adolescent; D001741:Black or African American / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000367:Age Factors; D003120:Colorado; D055812:Community-Based Participatory Research; D003625:Data Collection; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000517:prevention & control*; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008507:Medically Underserved Area; D018579:Patient Selection; D015143:Philadelphia; D010865:Pilot Projects; D015397:Program Evaluation; D014481:United States; D055815:Young Adult