More than 2 million older Americans from underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups (URGs) have early-stage Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). There are very few scalable recruitment strategies, particularly for Black older adults, to accelerate participation in ADRD research. The Indiana Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (IADRC) and its Community Advisory Board developed and implemented the innovative RAAISE-D Framework. This Framework informed the creation of community-first recruitment strategies designed to accelerate participation of Black older adults in ADRD research. Preliminary outcomes from its implementation included the doubling of Black adult enrollment (46, 13.4% to 101, 26.9%) from April 2020 to April 2024. Black adults were more likely to have normal cognition, be female, and ≤ 12 years of education than non-Hispanic White adults. The RAAISE-D Framework identified key concepts for URG focused recruitment strategies which successfully accelerated enrollment of Black adults in ADRD research and could be generalized to other URGs. HIGHLIGHTS: RAAISE-D Framework provides adaptable URG recruitment strategies. IADRC CAB-researcher partnership was the foundation of community-first methodology. RAAISE-D Framework doubled the Black enrollment in the IADRC in 4 years.
Keywords: Alzheimer's disease; health equity; recruitment.
© 2024 The Author(s). Alzheimer's & Dementia published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Alzheimer's Association.