Now That The Surge Weeks Have Come to a Close, We Can Reflect on The Takeaways

In November of 2022, the All of Us Department of Cohort Development (DCD), led by Dr. Holly Garriock, announced a new approach to Goal One, the enrollment and retention of core participants for All of Us. The model of enrollment surges for the All of Us Research Program was born to close out the year with a bang and take the program into 2023 on a high note. The idea came from a team charged with closing the gap around the 90,000 participants who had completed baseline elements in 2022.

As a short-term strategy, the goal was to hold two weeks of enrollment surges, meaning 100% focus on enrollment and not on retention or other activities in the fourth quarter. The ultimate long-term goal was to learn from these two enrollment weeks and build in coordinated enrollment weeks once per quarter. Dr. Garriock said these first two weeks would hopefully offer information on best practices and what needs improvement for future surge weeks.

Our Participant Technology System Center (PTSC) team jumped into action when the first Surge Week was announced and decided to develop a toolkit that included new pre-approved IRB (Institutional Review Boards) mix-and-match email and SMS templates in Spanish and English, Partner CMS deliverables, UTM tracking, PMT and Partner CMS training, and scenario-based training.

The Toolkit even received a shout-out from All of Us CEO Josh Denny, “I also want to give a special shout-out to our amazing PTSC Surge team who put together a beautiful toolkit, not to mention 1-on-1 support with sites and 4 Surge trainings! Your efforts and time are appreciated.”

1:1 Engagement with Participants Improves Program Activity Completion

The tools that the PTSC developed for the program are a foundational piece of participant engagement, recruitment, and retention. Program Management Toolkit (PMT) allows partners to track the participant’s journey through the program and reach their participants one-on-one. Many sites adopted the Surge strategy of conducting targeted call campaigns to participants who had consented but, for various reasons, had not become core participants. Multiple sites also opened their calendars through PMT and often double-booked appointments for the Surge Weeks to increase PM/B appointments.

Sherry Sawyer, Director and Co-PI of the VA All of Us Award, and the VA All of Us team utilized the new PMT feature, Survey-Sans-Log-in, which allows direct links to a program activity sent via email to participants in a PMT campaign. The deep link will direct participants to a non-consent program activity without requiring them to log in with their username and password.

For Surge Week Two, Annie Porter (Participant Systems Lead at the VA) created a PMT campaign targeted to participants in the Core minus PM (physical measurements) category. The campaign consisted of an email with a no-login link directing participants to input their remote PM, followed by a phone call a few days later, calling attention to the email and assisting with CATI if needed. Annie and a small team of VA program management staff conducted this campaign in Surge Week Two and successfully converted over 60 participants to Core!

Marketing Materials are Here to Help

In the beginning stages of any significant marketing event, like these Enrollment Surges, it’s essential to identify which marketing activities to implement. The PTSC decided to offer a variety of marketing materials for sites to utilize for their Surge campaigns.

Partner CMS

The Partner CMS platform launched communications and marketing into a fast track to reach potential participants through microsites and lead generation pages that speak directly to the populations that our engagement and enrollment partners have relationships with. Below is an example of a dynamic lead generation page created for a site in Alabama. This page gathered potential participant information through digital marketing and in-person events and put them into the prospect contact funnel.

New SMS and Email Campaigns

Updating your email and SMS campaigns with fresh, new content is essential so your prospects don’t get bored. The PTSC created new IRB mix-and-match SMS and email templates for the Surges in PMT. Sites could go in and clone these new templates and then add their site logos and website URLs. These new campaigns focused on highlighting the core values of All of Us, like the importance of diversity throughout medical research and furthering research to improve precision medicine. See below for an example of one of the new email templates the PTSC provided in PMT.

All of these marketing activities combined lead to enrollment success. As demonstrated on the post-breakdown call, all the tools within our platform were used to make Surge a success. 

Shared Comradery Connects Staff Across the Country

The NIH team created an Enrollment Surge Slack channel encouraging staff to share encouragement, problem-solving tips, your team's best ‘surge selfies,’ and additional Surge Week ideas.

During Surge Week One, the channel became a showcase of collaboration and excitement as groups from all aspects of the participant journey shared selfies of their teams doing tabling events out in the community and enrolling participants. Sherry Sawyer, Director and Co-PI of the VA All of Us, shared the photo from the Aurora/Denver Colorado VA Team that was tabling at the Veteran's Day 5K race.

All of Us spans the country with multiple sites in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. It can be challenging to achieve shared comradery virtually. However, sharing photos and encouragement in this Surge channel provided human touch points connecting staff from all over the country and increasing excitement throughout the week. The PTSC platform continues to evolve with this eye toward collaboration. We are finding ways our platform can support a strong connection for enrollment and engagement partners to work together to obtain our goal of one million or more participants.

Excitement for the Future

Surge weeks have given space for the PTSC to be nimble and ensure the needs of our stakeholders are met with the tools we have created. The collaboration and excitement felt across the consortium during this surge period were refreshing and showed precisely how the All of Us mission brings people together in a meaningful way. We at PTSC are very grateful for all the synergy and communication exchanged during these surge weeks with our partners and look forward to building on other successful surge weeks!