Digital culturally tailored marketing for enrolling Latino participants in a web-based registry: Baseline metrics from the Brain Health Registry

Abstract

Introduction: This culturally tailored enrollment effort aims to determine the feasibility of enrolling 5000 older Latino adults from California into the Brain Health Registries (BHR) over 2.25 years.

Methods: This paper describes (1) the development and deployment of culturally tailored BHR websites and digital ads, in collaboration with a Latino community science partnership board and a marketing company; (2) an interim feasibility analysis of the enrollment efforts and numbers, and participant characteristics (primary aim); as well as (3) an exploration of module completion and a preliminary efficacy evaluation of the culturally tailored digital efforts compared to BHR's standard non-culturally tailored efforts (secondary aim).

Results: In 12.5 months, 3603 older Latino adults were enrolled (71% of the total California Latino BHR initiative enrollment goal). Completion of all BHR modules was low (6%).

Discussion: Targeted ad placement, culturally tailored enrollment messaging, and culturally tailored BHR websites increased enrollment of Latino participants in BHR, but did not translate to increased module completion.

Highlights: Culturally tailored social marketing and website improvements were implemented. The efforts enrolled 5662 Latino individuals in 12.5 months. The number of Latino Brain Health Registry (BHR) participants increased by 122.7%. We failed to adequately enroll female Latinos and Latinos with lower education. Future work will evaluate effects of a newly released Spanish-language BHR website.

Keywords: Alzheimer's; Brain Health Registry; Facebook; Latino; dementia; digital marketing; diversity; engagement; enrollment; ethnicity; recruitment; social media.