How Gift Card Rewards Boost Alzheimer's Clinical Study Participation

Providing simple gift card rewards increased the patient enrollment responses among low-income and other minority groups for Alzheimer’s clinical trial registries, according to a new study by University of Southern California (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Financial Incentives to Increase Diversity of Older Participants in a Memory Concerns Registry

Go to source). Effective outreach plans are required to approach marginalized people for Alzheimer’s clinical studies. Exploring the ethics of financial support for clinical trial enrollment, the research targeted underserved individuals for patient registries. Unlike chance-based rewards, gift card tokens were more effective.

Minority People Respond Better to Incentives

Nearly 50,000 adults 50 and older without a dementia diagnosis were invited over email or text message to enroll in the Alzheimer prevention Trial (APT) Webstudy, which aims to accelerate clinical trials by identifying and tracking individuals who may be at higher risk for developing Alzheimer’s. The participants all received care through an integrated county health system that primarily serves Medicaid enrollees.

They were randomly assigned into three groups. An active control group received a simple invitation to register; a second group was offered a $25 Amazon gift card for enrolling; and a third group was offered, as a reward for enrolling, entry into a prize drawing for a $2,500 Amazon gift card with 1-in-100 odds of winning.

Expanding the Patient Network Remains Essential

The small gift card offers increased enrollment by almost 40% compared to the message-only control group.

Participants who were white, male or enrolled in Medicaid responded strongest to the incentive. The opportunity to win much larger prize money, however, did not increase enrollment.

Although the small gift card offers significantly increased enrollment, the message-only approach was a much cheaper and more cost-effective approach to registering low-income patients.

Ultimately, investing in outreach to underrepresented communities may be a more effective use of patient registry resources, researchers concluded.

Reference:

1. Financial Incentives to Increase Diversity of Older Participants in a Memory Concerns Registry - (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2837800)

Source-Eurekalert