Services and consultation

It can be hard to know how to best recruit for your study goals and population. OCTRI Recruitment can help! Meet with our team for a complimentary recruitment consult to discuss your recruitment needs and goals and help you create a strategy tailored to your study.  To schedule a recruitment consultation, or for questions about the resources described here, please email octrirecruitment@ohsu.edu. 

• Recruitment Consultation FAQs

OCTRI Resources 

• Cohort Discovery: A web-based tool that allows investigators to discover patient cohort counts for preparatory to research purposes and obtain identifiable datasets.

• Research Data Warehouse: A repository of Epic data that can be utilized to identify potential participants, assess feasibility, and obtain retrospective data on current study participants.

• Research tools in Epic: Identify potential participants and send recruitment invitations through Epic tools like Best Practice Advisories (BPA) and MyChart.

• Clinical Research Development Team: Meet to discuss research project development, implementation, or ongoing challenges and receive overall advice regarding operations best practices, tools and connections to streamline and guide your research project.  

• Research Volunteer Registry and Biorepository (RVR): A registry of healthy volunteers at OHSU who are interested in and consented to be contacted about research. Investigators can request contact information for potential participants or blood, urine, stool and saliva specimens.  

• Study coordinators: OCTRI study coordinators are experienced in traditional and innovative recruitment methods and in high demand due to their professionalism and strong track record of successfully recruiting participants for studies. 

• Community Outreach, Research and Engagement (CORE): OCTRI's CORE team provides community-based support in rural Oregon to facilitate community-engaged research and assist academic researchers in developing community-based partnerships. 

• ResearchMatch: ResearchMatch, developed and funded through the NIH CTSA program, helps to connect people interested in research studies with researchers from top medical centers. Facilitated at OHSU by OCTRI. Researchers can sign up for Feasibility Access to see aggregate data within the registry population or Recruitment Access to identify volunteers who are a good match for their study. You can register as an investigator, read the Researcher FAQ, or contact the OCTRI Navigator to learn more. 

• Trial Innovation Network: The Trial Innovation Network (TIN), established through the NIH CTSA program, assists investigators planning and conducting multi-site research. See the TIN section below for more information.  

Recruitment feasibility tools

Protocol feasibility checklist: A checklist tool for investigators who need to evaluate the feasibility of conducting an industry-sponsored study at OHSU.

Cohort Discovery: A self-service, web-based tool that allows investigators to identify patient cohort counts from Epic data for preparatory to research purposes. Note that this tool is only available to OHSU employees and training is required.

General guidance

Recruitment plan worksheet: Building a participant profile 

Recruitment materials and methods- List of recruitment methods and materials that can be used for research studies

Health literacy checklist for research communication

Research recruitment guidance during modified operations

Representative recruitment images - Sources for inclusive photos at low to no cost

Population-specific guidance

Recruiting participants not part of your patient population

Including Veteran populations in research

Disease demographics: Ensuring participant demographics match disease demographics 

Including pediatric populations in research

Including older adults in research

Older adult recruitment resource kit

Method-specific guidance

Using social media for participant recruitment

Electronic health record (EHR) recruitment tools: Determining which tool is best for your study

Methods and best practices for recruiting in the community

Digital recruitment - A short video describing digital strategies for research recruitment

Previous recruitment presentations

Research Participant Compensation: Recruitment Considerations, IRB Requirements, and Best Practices (Nov. 14, 2024)

• Presentation Slides
• Echo 360 Recording

Equipping Researchers to Overcome Recruitment Challenges: An Institution's Programmatic Response to the Voice of its Research Community (May 15, 2024)

• Presentation slides
• Recording 

Recruitment Planning for Protocol and Grant Development: A Practical Foundation for Clinical Trial Success (May 23, 2019)

• Presentation Slides
• Echo 360 Recording

Social Media and Subject Recruitment: How to make it work for you (Feb. 28, 2019) 

• Presentation slides
• Echo 360 Recording

Including Older Adults in Research - Implementing the NIH Lifespan Policy & Recruitment Strategies (Feb. 5, 2019) 

• Presentation slides 
• Echo 360 Recording 

2018 Recruitment Survey Results and OCTRI Recruitment Toolkit Launch (Jan. 24, 2019) 

• Presentation slides

Health literacy for research communication

Having easy-to-read, understandable, user-friendly health information is important for a potential participant’s ability to obtain, process, and understand research opportunities and make informed decisions about participation. Health literacy can impact multiple aspects of a study and is important to the recruitment, engagement, and retention of research participants.

Resources:

• OCTRI Recruitment: Health literacy checklist guidance document
• OHSU Communications: Health literacy
• OHSU Health literacy basics for written communication (self-paced Compass course)
• CDC Health literacy
• NIH Clear communication

Integrating Special Populations: Older adults

The OCTRI Integrating Special Populations Core (ISP), as a part of the NIH CTSA grant model, facilitates research focused on better understanding how and why certain populations, like older adults, are excluded from research and the measures research teams can take to ensure their inclusion.

The ISP Core works closely with OCTRI Recruitment, Community Outreach, Research & Engagement program (CORE), the Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network (ORPRN), and others at OHSU and regionally.

• ISP Research Projects, Education and Resources

Trial Innovation Network (TIN)

OCTRI, through the CTSA program, is part of the Trial Innovation Network (TIN). A network that helps investigators address roadblocks in clinical trials and provide support for proposal development, clinical trial resources, and recruitment and retention strategies.

Online resources for study teams include the TIN Toolbox and Collaboration Webinars, with guidance on consent, safety monitoring, biostatistics,  recruitment and retention, community engagement, and many more topics.

To learn more about partnering with TIN, visit the TIN website or email OCTRI’s TIN liaison team at octri@ohsu.edu.

StudyPages – OHSU's research opportunity platform

StudyPages is an online, participant friendly platform that changes how institutions like OHSU and its study teams find and engage with people interested in research. Study teams can create and publish listings for their eligible studies that provide the public with engaging, understandable information and allows for teams and potential participants to easily connect.

To learn more about using the platform for your study(ies), access the OHSU StudyPages training resources below. An OHSU account is required to access the manual and video.   

• Training Manual v3
• Training Video (password hBaqrGz8)
• Process Chart
• FAQ 
• Checklist for Publishing 
• Process Chart for Translated StudyPages
• Demo for Translated StudyPages (7/16/24 Coffee Chat recording located on CRU Teams channel) 
• OHSU IRB SOP HRP-181 Clinical Trial Listings 

For questions or assistance, email octrirecruitment@ohsu.edu. To access your account, visit the platform and use your OHSU credentials to log in.      

Are you a community member or external provider interested in research opportunities at OHSU, visit our gallery for a complete listing of available study opportunities. For cancer specific studies, visit our Knight Cancer gallery for available study opportunities. For general questions about using StudyPages to find available studies, or questions about participating in research studies at OHSU, please email octrirecruitment@ohsu.edu.