Table 1.

Initial strategies for engagement, recruitment and retention in a multilevel, community-based research study

Strategy	Description of the process	Principles addressed
Head Start (HS) Centers
1. Build on previous relationships	Engaged communities with existing or previous relationships with our research center or members of the research team	Expand trust Maintain long-term relationships
2. Identify an individual in each community to advocate for the study	Identified and worked with a stakeholder in each community who believed in the study and was willing to advocate for it within the community	Find a community champion Build partnership Promote project benefits
3. Jointly develop a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA)	Collaborated with community partners to develop an MOA outlining the roles and responsibilities of both the research team and the community partners, and explicitly stating benefits for both the intervention and comparison sites	Provide for an equitable partnership Establish trust Communicate clearly Promote project benefits
4. Incorporate the partner organization’s goals	Designed an intervention that helped community partners meet or exceed their own performance standards and other regulations or requirements	Build partnership Demonstrate respect
5. Assign one dedicated person to maintain contact	Assigned a single point of contact for community partners to use when communicating with the research team	Build trust Communicate clearly Provide for an equitable partnership
Children
1. Communicate in person with families	Presented the study in-person to family members, reviewed materials and provided an opportunity for questions	Build trust Demonstrate respect Promote project benefits
2. Use appropriate language	Conducted presentations and provided materials in Spanish when appropriate and at the appropriate education level to enhance understanding	Communicate clearly Demonstrate respect
Parents
1. Employ local champions to assist with the project	Hired local champions to assist with contacting potential participants and scheduling interviews	Find a community champion Demonstrate respect Communicate clearly
2. Conduct interviews at a location convenient to participants	Made interviews as convenient and comfortable as possible for the participants	Demonstrate respect
3. Use bilingual interviewers	Used bilingual interviewers to address participants in the language in which they were most comfortable	Build trust Demonstrate respect
Provide incentives	Provided incentives commensurate with participant commitment	Demonstrate respect
Grocery Stores
1. Involve a nutrition scientist	Employed a nutrition scientist familiar with the health and nutritional aspects of products and the intervention as well as an understanding of the business impact of the intervention	Build partnership Demonstrate respect
2. Have research team members maintain intervention materials	Had research team members go to the grocery stores at regular intervals to maintain intervention materials (e.g., recipes, project brochures, and signage)	Build partnership Demonstrate respect
Healthcare Providers
1. Work through an established network of healthcare providers	Recruited community healthcare providers from an established network	Build relationships Focus on participant preferences
2. Make minimal requests on healthcare provider time	Integrated interventions into regular healthcare provider practice	Demonstrate respect Build relationships
3. Use professional recommendations	Used the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations and built the intervention with those recommendations in mind	Demonstrate respect
4. Offer an intervention-related incentive	Provided an incentive that contributed to the intervention and met professional standards for healthcare providers	Build partnership Demonstrate respect