Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a long-term digestive condition. Sexual health can be impacted by IBD, but men’s needs have been neglected in research. Men report that their sexual health is rarely discussed at appointments, and specialist information and support are lacking. The MenSH-IBD study is working with patients, their partners, nurses, and other healthcare professionals to develop a tool that nurses can have in their clinic space that addresses this unmet need.
Early recruitment to the study was slow, until the team utilised the NIHR’s online research registry, Be Part of Research, to support their strategy for reaching men with IBD.
Greg Forshaw, Research Associate for the MenSH-IBD study, said: “When I initially spoke with a member of the team at Be Part of Research, she mentioned that there were over 2,000 men on the registry who had said they were interested in finding out about IBD research. We were very sceptical about it at first, because all our other strategies had fallen short. I thought if we got another 50 men through the service, that would be fantastic.
“Invites went out over 4 consecutive weeks and we just suddenly got an avalanche of responses. It was astonishing. I was processing a month's worth of responses in a few days. We recruited 347 participants through Be Part of Research."
"That was nearly all the recruitment that we were after, just from one source. It's safe to say that Be Part of Research has been the saving of this arm of the study.”"
- Greg Forshaw, Research Associate, MenSH-IBD study
Reaching people who want to help
Finding suitable participants for a study is not always easy. Be Part of Research provides the first UK-wide registry for all health and care specialties.
Greg said: “Recruitment is the key part of any research process. With Be Part of Research you have a huge number of people who have said they want to participate in research and they want to talk about these subjects. You’re pushing against an open door.
“As a chief investigator, it can help you with one of your biggest issues generally, which is reaching people who want to help. They want to be talked to. They want to shape research and we have a duty to support them to shape the research.”
Diverse recruitment
Be Part of Research gives researchers and sponsors free and easy access to research-engaged volunteers from across the UK. The service enables volunteers to be identified through a wide range of data including age, ethnic group, sex, location and condition.
Greg said: “One of the many brilliant things is that we recruited people from across the country. We roughly knew about what was going on in our region, but if we're building a tool that's useful across the whole NHS, then we needed to reach every corner of the country and we needed a diversity of people responding. We were really struggling to do that via the means that we had."
"It was great to suddenly have a vast network of people who were willing to participate from every corner of the country and from diverse backgrounds.”
- Greg Forshaw
Find out more about which studies can use Be Part of Research and complete our study registration form to get started.
