Successful Strategies for Recruiting Low-Income Minority Group Women in a Community-Based Health Promotion Program

Purpose: Low-income and minority groups need to be well represented in health promotion studies so as to identify and address the existing health disparities in the U.S. However, studies have shown that it is challenging to successfully recruit low-income and minority groups into a study. The purpose of this study is to describe the strategies that were successful in recruiting low-income minority women into a community-based health promotion program.

Methods: This is a simple descriptive study where women were asked during a pre-intervention screening survey about how they learned about the study. Univariate and bivariate analyses were conducted using STATA 10.

Results: Sixty-one (43%) of the 141 women were African American, 38% were Hispanic, and 15% were White. The women were 18 to 55 years of age (mean =31 years), 73% had household income less than $20,000.00. Most of the recruitment was done through community health workers (28.4%) and flyers distributed from house to house in the neighborhoods (27.7%). Fifteen percent of the women heard about the study through community-based agencies.  The most successful means of recruitment among African American was through the community health workers, and through flyers distributed in the neighborhoods for Hispanic and White women

Conclusions: Partnership within the neighborhoods through active involvement of resident community health workers and local agencies are successful means of recruiting low-income women from ethnic minority group into a community-based health promotion program.