2 - (SYM 68) Strategies for Recruitment and Engagement of Ethnoracially Minoritized Communities of Older Adults

Introduction: Physical activity (PA) is a critical driver of physical and mental well-being; however, 20-60% of older adults meet their age-specific PA guidelines. Ethnoracially minoritized older adults exercise less frequently than White individuals as they experience additional barriers to PA. To help reduce these barriers, we seek to partner with four ethnoracially diverse churches, senior centers, and/or community centers to implement an exercise-based study for older adults. We describe strategies and lessons learned from recruitment and engagement.
Methods: Initial outreach was done via email and phone calls. We focused on churches and centers located in diverse neighborhoods, especially ones that had fewer exercise programming options.Following initial contact, study staff scheduled virtual meetings with interested sites to discuss the study. In-person visits were then conducted with eligible sites to strengthen trust and rapport and further evaluate the feasibility of the study.
Results: A total of 55 sites were contacted based on 1) ethnoracial diversity of the community; 2) recommendations from study stakeholders/community champions, and 3) parcing the churches and centers associated with the Boston Black Church Vitality Project, and the Boston Ministerial Alliance Tenpoint.: Of these 55 sites, there were 27 senior centers (49.1%), 21 churches (38.2%), and 7 community centers (12.7%). Eighteen sites (32.7%) showed initial interest in the study, 14 (77.7%) of whom participated in a virtual introductory meeting with study staff. Of these 14 sites, two were no longer interested, one was unable to continue due to study criteria conflicting with government guidelines (i.e., government-funded centers cannot exclude interested individuals from their programming), and one did not have the space for classes. We continue to evaluate logistics with the 10 remaining sites, such as space and access to the target population.
Conclusions: We found that barriers participating included government guidelines conflicting with study inclusion criteria, language barriers, lack of access to enthnoracially older adults, and sites already having existing exercise programming. Facilitators for engagement included in-person meetings, providing food and other resources (e.g., exercise equipment), partnerships between community organizations, sustainability of our programming, and translating study materials into other languages.