VCID Biomarkers Coordinating Center

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Project Summary/Abstract The MarkVCID initiative is responsible for executing one of NIND’s highest identified priorities for reducing the contribution of cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) to cognitive impairment and dementia: selection and validation of SVD biomarkers for use in VCID research and trials. MarkVCID2, the current phase of the consortium, is structured as a single coordinating center (CC) based at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and nine performance sites comprised of 15 US medical centers. To accomplish MarkVCID2’s goal of clinically validating selected SVD biomarkers for full readiness for trial application, each award site will be required to enroll at least 200 individuals meeting MarkVCID2 eligibility criteria over two years and retain them for annual follow-up visits over three years. The enrolled population will be required at a minimum to include adequate numbers of African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian individuals to ensure generalizability of the findings to typically underrepresented populations as well as adequate numbers of subjects across the spans of age and cognitive impairment potentially suitable for SVD trials. The COVID19 pandemic has posed considerable barriers to meeting these ambitious goals, particularly for recruitment in the typically underrepresented populations where obstacles to research participation and staffing shortages have the greatest negative impact. The current proposal seeks to overcome these challenges by equipping the MGH CC to serve as a central core of resources for site recruitment and retention of the targeted diverse subject groups. We propose to establish two key new positions at the CC: a Recruitment and Retention Project Manager and a Data and Reporting Specialist. The Project Manager will serve as the central coordinator of recruitment and retention strategies with focus on underrepresented populations: identifying, disseminating, and customizing best practices, recruitment materials, and lessons learned from targeted community outreach initiatives. The Data and Reporting Specialist will develop and deploy processes at the CC for real-time monitoring and communication to sites of actionable recruitment and retention data that can be used to guide strategy, allocate effort, and avoid the burden of developing their own tracking tools. By centralizing the demanding and time-consuming processes of identifying successful recruitment and retention strategies and real-time tracking of recruitment/retention diversity, these two positions will take substantial burden off site personnel and work against the increasingly prevalent negative feedback loop of stressful work environments causing loss of site personnel. These will be sustainable positions built on the expertise accumulated by the MGH CC. By substantially reducing duplicative work, the added positions will allow sites to redirect their staff to on-the-ground recruitment and study visit procedures. We anticipate that the resultant improvement in site working conditions will improve career satisfaction and retention of experienced site staff and ultimately MarkVCID2’s recruitment and retention performance.