RECRUITMENT STRATEGIES OF THE SPANISH GROUP IN THE “EU CHILDHOOD OBESITY: PROGRAMMING BY INFANT NUTRITION”

RECRUITMENT STRATEGIES OF THE

SPANISH GROUP IN THE “EU CHILDHOOD OBESITY: PROGRAMMING BY INFANT NUTRITION”

V. Luque, G. Méndez, F. Capdevila, J. Mariné, R. Closa, J. Escribano

Paediatrics Unit, Medical School, University Rovira i Virgili, Spain.

Aim: To describe the strategy used on the recruitment of 320 Spanish formula fed (FF) babies enrolled in the “EU CHILDHOOD OBESITY: PROGRAMMING BY INFANT NUTRITION”(EPOC) (QLK1-2001-00389) and the factors that made the recruitment successful.

Methods: Multicentre, prospective and randomized study, that compares different feeding patterns (2 infant formulae with different protein load and a breastfed (BF) control group) during the first year of life. Two main strategies were defined to optimise the recruitment:

1.Contact with the maximum number of new-borns in hospital: two full-time dieticians recruited 7 days a week checking all new-borns daily. Families, whose babies met the inclusion criteria, were invited to participate in the project during the 48h after delivery. BF babies who changed into FF within the first weeks of life were also phoned and included in the FF group.

2:To reach the highest percentage of acceptance: meetings with the hospital staff and an informative campaign addressed to the target population were organized before starting the recruitment.

Results: During one year, 3192 babies were born in the study hospitals, 2502 babies were checked (78,4%), 1720 of them met the inclusion criteria (68,7%), and 490 of these were FF since birth. From these ones, we offered the project to 422 families (86,1%), and 252 accepted (59,7%). Additionally, were recruited 73 babies that had abandoned breastfeeding. This comes to a total of 325 FF babies.

Conclusions: The success of our recruitment was due to the high number of families contacted. The successful percentage of acceptance was achieved due to the wide dissemination of the project. Another important factor was the personal effort expended t by the recruitment team.

Keywords: infant nutrition, obesity, longitudinal study, randomized controlled trial, recruitment strategies.

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