Diabetes Healthy Heart Project Toolkit

Module 2: Identifying, Recruiting, and Retaining Participants

Purpose To provide information and lessons learned from SDPI Healthy Heart grantees on identifying, recruiting, and retaining individuals in Healthy Heart (HH) programs.

Overview When your clinic is ready to implement a Healthy Heart program, it's important to determine how you are going to identify and recruit participants. Planning for clinic-based referrals and community-based recruitment activities will help you meet your recruitment goals. Once your program has identified and recruited individuals, it's important to retain participants to help them achieve cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk reduction goals.

The SDPI HH grantees reduced CVD risk in people with diabetes. However, these same CVD risk reduction approaches have been shown to be effective in other people at risk for CVD. As such, some programs may wish to include people without diabetes who could benefit from this intervention. Ensure that participants are healthy enough to be able to safely participate in program activities.

This module provides strategies and ideas to consider for identifying, recruiting, and retaining participants.

• Module 1: Getting Started
• Module 2: Identifying, Recruiting, and Retaining Participants
• Module 3: Implement a Healthy Heart Program
• Module 4: Build a Sustainable Program
• Appendices
• Acknowledgments