Patient Engagement

Targeted Facebook ads slash recruitment costs for Michael J. Fox Foundation

The average cost of recruiting a trial subject via the targeted Facebook ads was $35, 96 percent less than the $800-per-person average through other means for the Michael J. Fox Foundation study.

<> on February 24, 2016 in Berlin, Germany.

MedCity News has partnered with BioCrossroads to provide coverage focused on Indiana’s next generation of growth and innovation in life sciences.

Need to find people from a specific ethnic group to fill out a genetics-focused clinical trial? You might want to try advertising on Facebook.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research needed to find more people of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage for a study on the hereditary form of Parkinson’s disease.

This ethnic group, originating in Eastern Europe, is far more likely than the general population to have the most common genetic mutation associated with Parkinson’s. (Google co-founder Sergey Brin, born in Russia to Jewish parents, carries this mutation, called LRRK2 G2019S.)

In May 2015, five years after an Indiana University team began the MJFF-funded Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative genetics study, the researchers still needed more subjects with LRRK2 G2019S and one other common mutation for a new pilot project. So the foundation ran advertising on Facebook, specifically targeting those who had expressed interest in Jewish topics and who lived near a study site.

Here’s a sample ad:

PPMI New York

“We had never done this before,” said Sohini Chowdhury, the MJFF’s senior vice president of research partnership.

It worked surprisingly well. “We had to close the pilot after two months,” Chowdhury said. “We took a pause and we scaled up.”

Not only did the researchers see a 33 percent increase in the number of enrolled participants in the pilot, the cost of recruitment plummeted. As in, by nearly 96 percent.

The average cost of recruiting a trial subject via the targeted Facebook ads was $35. That compares to the $800-per-person average to recruit patients for the PPMI study through traditional means.

“It surpassed our expectations,” Chowdhury said.

Those who clicked on the advertising were taken to an online screening survey. People who fit the demographic profile then could connect with an Indiana University recruitment counselor by phone or Internet video. The university mailed out DNA “spit kits” to potential subjects, and genetic counselors followed up with test results.

A 2015 open-access article in the journal Molecular Genetics & Genomic Medicine, based on earlier phases in the study, found that 88 percent of those sent a kit returned DNA samples. Chowdhury said the response rate was above 90 percent among those recruited through the Facebook ads.

Advertising on social media isn’t a complete replacement for other recruitment methods such as doctor recommendations. “It’s a lot easier when you have a specific population you are trying to target,” Chowdhury said.

However, the test went so well that the MJFF has been setting up a digital strategies marketing team at its New York headquarters, Chowdhury reported. “There is a lot of interest among investigators in this approach,” she said. “We’re definitely going to try this in future studies.”

Photos: Sean Gallup/Getty Images, Michael J. Fox Foundation

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