Abstract B186: Advancing community-engaged recruitment: Progress and evaluation of the CaRE2 Health Center Community Contact Registry

Abstract

Community contact registries help enhance cancer research recruitment by connecting interested community members with research and health education opportunities. The Florida-California Cancer Research, Education and Engagement (CaRE2) Health Center established a Community Contact Registry (CCR) to support participant-centered recruitment and disseminate cancer-related research, education, and outreach opportunities. Initially developed to share CaRE2 discoveries, the CCR evolved into a resource used by investigators to recruit participants and promote cancer research, education, prevention, and awareness. The CCR, led by the Community Outreach Core (COC), enrolls adults (≥18 years) residing in Florida or California through community outreach, events, social media, and partner organizations. Participants provide demographic information, cancer interests, communication preferences, and willingness to participate in future research. The COC developed procedures to maintain registry fidelity, track enrollment, and review requests to disseminate research and education opportunities. To ensure ethical dissemination, investigators submit IRB-approved study requests for COC review before recruitment opportunities are distributed to eligible registrants. Registry communications are unidirectional; registrants receive research study opportunities to participate and contact researchers directly. Shared studies have included chronic pain, uterine fibroids, and sickle cell disease, which includes NIH-funded research. The CCR expanded from a communication resource into a recruitment infrastructure. Results provided on 1,535 eligible registrants showed most participants identified as female (70.3%), Black/African American (59.0%), or Hispanic/Latino (38.3%), with 64.9% residing in Florida and 34.7% in California. Participants indicated willingness to participate in future survey-based research (90%) and/or biospecimen donation, including saliva (24.8%), hair (23.6%), and blood (22.0%). Several researchers have used the registry to recruit participants, resulting in dissemination of 11 research studies and more than 100 educational opportunities. Self-reported enrollment attributable to the CCR includes 25 participants enrolled in an NIH-funded research study at Mayo Clinic. Current evaluation efforts are expanding to track engagement and recruitment outcomes to assess registry effectiveness, sustainability, and guide improvement strategies. The CaRE2 CCR demonstrates the impact of community-centered infrastructure in advancing equitable research recruitment and expanding access to cancer-related research and education opportunities. By building trust-based partnerships between researchers and communities, the CCR has supported engagement of diverse populations and facilitated participation in clinical and translational research. Continued evaluation of engagement and recruitment outcomes will inform sustainability and provide a scalable model for strengthening community-informed research recruitment efforts. Brooke Vintilla, Nazleen Del Rio, Sandra Suther, Eduardo Ibarra, Carolina Aristizabal, Nicole Kindel, Tuo Lin, John S. Luque, Jennifer Tsui, Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati, Mariana C. Stern, Fern J. Webb. Advancing community-engaged recruitment: Progress and evaluation of the CaRE2 Health Center Community Contact Registry [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 19th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities; 2026 Oct 18-21; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2026;35(10 Suppl):Abstract nr B186.