Do you have marketing experience? Are you passionate about having an impact in healthcare through clinical trials? Patient recruitment might be the career for you.
I recently interviewed Sara Root, Director, Account Leadership at Continuum Clinical, a patient recruitment organization. We discussed patient recruitment and her advice on careers in this space. I learned that patient recruitment requires a combination of marketing experience and knowledge about clinical trials.
Patient recruitment is a key part of drug development
In drug development, clinical trials are a necessary investment for pharmaceutical companies. According to the Congressional Budget Office, pharmaceutical companies spend over an average of a billion dollars on clinical trials per approved new drug.
These trials are designed to test the efficacy and safety of investigational drugs. Pharmaceutical companies (called sponsors) submit the results and data collected from the trials to regulatory authorities, like the US Food and Drug Administration, to get market approval.
Sara said, “One of the challenges that sponsors face is recruiting the right people to enroll in their clinical trials.” Almost half of all research sites fail to meet recruitment targets.
Delays in clinical trial recruitment are a substantial cost factor in drug development. Companies often cancel trials that fail to enroll, resulting in wasted resources. Even worse, patients who may benefit from the drug will never have the opportunity to use it.
This is where patient recruitment comes in and plays an important role.
Patient recruitment organizations, or PROs, work with both sponsors and research sites in the US and around the world to achieve their clinical trial recruitment objectives. The overall goal for PROs is to help clinical trials enroll patients and keep them enrolled for the duration of the trial.
How do PROs recruit clinical trial patients?
PROs identify the best strategic approach for supporting recruitment and retention in trial participation. This can range from creating marketing materials for patients and site staff to marketing campaigns to reach identified targets and designing appropriate channels or opportunities to connect research sites with potential trial participants.
They reach potential participants through digital platforms, such as social media, and traditional broadcasting platforms, such as TV, radio, and newspaper. Outreach can include print advertisements, cold calling and call centers, as well as direct mail or email, depending on the target demographic identified.
In addition, patient recruitment strategies may include working with patient advocacy groups, patient networks, and physician referrals. Recent technological advances allow for identifying potential participants through electronic medical records pharmacy and other healthcare databases.
Pharmaceutical companies and patient recruitment
Some pharmaceutical and biotech companies have internal patient engagement functions. These functions likely have responsibilities beyond patient recruitment for clinical trials. Therefore, they engage with PROs and other related marketing agencies to expand their bandwidth to complete their work.
According to Sara, “patient recruitment is a very niche area of marketing.” Thus, pharmaceutical companies may want to leverage a PRO for their specific expertise and to execute their patient recruitment strategy. For example, PROs understand research sites and can optimize their marketing strategies to the specific trial.
Typically, the main contacts within pharmaceutical companies for PROs are those that work in Clinical Operations (though the actual department nomenclature will vary by company). Additional representatives from other functions validate the marketing materials as they are developed. These may include legal, study team members, regulatory affairs, etc.
Editorial note: For more on pharmaceutical marketing, see this post.
New trends in patient recruitment for clinical trials
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the general public has become more interested in the subject of clinical trials. In fact, they now have a greater understanding of how clinical trials work and their purpose.
Those working in patient recruitment have been active in recruiting patients for trials testing investigational COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.
“People are motivated by different things when they participate in trials,” Sara says. In particular, in relation to the COVID-19 vaccines, she shares, “They want to be part of something bigger. Part of the answer.”
In addition to the pandemic-related trials, as clinical practice has evolved during the pandemic, patient recruitment has had to work harder and be extra creative in reaching potential trial patients.
“It’s a booming industry,” Sara notes. “It takes a lot of people to get the work done, and there’s more work than people to do it.”
In fact, the patient recruitment and retention services market will reach an estimated $5.3 billion in market value by 2030.
Diversity and inclusion in clinical trials for achieving health equity
Another important trend is the diversity and inclusion of patients in clinical trials. The FDA notes that “People from racial and ethnic minorities and other diverse groups are underrepresented in clinical research.”
The concern is that people of different ages, races, and ethnicities may react in different ways to drugs. Therefore, clinical trial participants need to better represent the patients that will eventually use the drugs.
Despite this underrepresentation being known for a long time, sponsors are only now very motivated to change the way they recruit patients for clinical trials. Sponsors may have health equity initiatives spurred by the racial justice movement reignited by George Floyd’s death in 2020.
Sara emphasizes that PROs are playing a major role in these diversity and inclusion recruitment initiatives.
PROs help with appropriate research site selection. Not only should the sites be accessible to the demographics that represent the population of the disease, but the sites themselves should also have staff that represent the demographics recruited for the trial.
Working in a PRO - what you need to know
According to Sara, working in patient recruitment is at the intersection of marketing and healthcare. “Even better if you have clinical trial knowledge,” she added.
The PRO that she works for has several departments, such as those responsible for liaising with sponsors and research sites, creative design, branding, data analytics, digital technology, and concept testing.
Each department has specialists with a unique set of skills, so people with various educational and work backgrounds can work in the area of patient recruitment.
When I asked Sara about her work in patient recruitment, she said, “I am always learning!” She advised that success on the job in patient recruitment means that you have to understand the following:
- The disease condition for the clinical trial
- The clinical trial protocol
- Patients’ potential barriers to enrolling or staying on a study
- Patients’ concerns, such as being randomized to a placebo arm
- Family member or caregiver burdens related to the trial
- Government regulations in drug development and trials
- Institutional Review Boards (IRB) processes
Sara says that the majority of people coming into PROs are either coming with marketing agency or PRO experience or they are coming from working in a pharmaceutical company.
The PRO Account Lead is an orchestrator role
Sara is a Director in Account Leadership at Continuum Clinical. This means that she liaises between sponsors and the PRO’s internal subject matter experts. She manages the sponsors’ goals and monitors progress while also bringing in her PRO colleagues’ expertise on strategy and execution.
For those early in their Account Leadership positions, Sara says there can be some project management involved in the work. As they gain more experience, Account Leaders influence the patient recruitment strategy.
As Director in Account Leadership, Sara has to understand human behavior and work with a lot of different personalities, both within the PRO and external. Her job is all about relationship building and strategic leadership. Describing her work day, Sara says, “Lots of emails and phone calls!”
Account Leads need to be always curious, always open to learning. For what it takes to be successful in her role, she explained, “Take the initiative to dig deep. Never settle for just any answer. Keep asking why!”
Mentoring Account Leads in patient recruitment
Sara manages and mentors several Account Leaders located all over the country. They are entry level to supervisor level. She says that her team at Continuum Clinical feels connected all day long because they’re constantly in contact with each other.
Given the busy day-to-day work, however, it can be a challenge to carve out time to talk about career development. “But it’s so important to set aside time to do this!” she emphasizes.
Sara wishes that someone had told her that it was OK to feel confused when she first started her job. “I often felt like I had to figure it out alone,” she said. This is why she helps her mentees manage expectations.
First, she helps her mentees manage expectations in terms of how long it takes someone new in the role to get up to speed. She advises that it could be 6 months before someone is truly comfortable in the new role and things are clicking.
“In the virtual world, people are more proactive about asking questions, so it’s been quicker!” she says, as she’s had new employees start during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Someone who is self-motivated will be successful, Sara observes. “I always tell them that it’s OK to ask questions.”
Career advice: Always be open to growth opportunities
When I asked Sara to share career advice, she said, “Embrace new work.” She went on further to describe how being open to growth opportunities might lead to a professional connection or experience that grows your career in exciting and interesting ways.
She also advises, “You don’t need to be an expert. It’s OK to admit when you don’t know something.” I agreed that it takes courage and maturity for someone to follow her advice to “be willing to be vulnerable and ask for help.”
In terms of some basic strategies for career success, Sara suggested, “Come a few minutes early to work; stay a few minutes later.” She reasoned, “This could open doors.”
Her prior female mentors had given her the following advice: “Be your own cheerleader” and “Deliver what you have to deliver.”
Resources for patient recruitment
Sara directs those interested in learning about patient recruitment and clinical research to the Center for Information and Study on Clinical Research Participation (CISCRP). It’s a non-profit educational organization that seeks to increase the public’s awareness of clinical trials.
As for working in PROs, Sara suggests that job seekers explore LinkedIn and PRO company websites.
Here are some lists of PROs that I found with a quick Google search:
- 22 Best Clinical Trial Companies For Patient Recruitment In 2022 [Ultimate Guide]
- 15 Clinical Trial Patient Recruitment Companies
- What to Look for in Top Clinical Trial Recruitment Companies
Last words
As a college student, I interned at Merck and worked on the recruitment and retention of participants in the Gardasil vaccine clinical trials. I spent the summer doing manual data entry of participant surveys to better understand their barriers and incentives for staying enrolled in the trials.
Therefore, I was particularly excited to talk with Sara about patient recruitment. I wanted to understand what it means to have a career in patient recruitment today - as well as how to be successful.
In my research for this post, I also suspected and confirmed that technology for patient recruitment and retention has substantially advanced since my college days. With more data and data analytics readily available, identifying and communicating with clinical trial patients is now quite sophisticated.
Today’s marketing professionals who have a passion for making an impact on healthcare have a lot of tools for contributing to successful drug development through patient recruitment.
A huge thank you to Sara Root for letting me interview her and for providing helpful career advice for those interested in working in patient recruitment!