Direct-to-Consumer Recruitment Methods via Traditional and Social Media to Aid in Research Accrual for Clinical Trials for Rare Diseases: Comparative Analysis Study

Janelle Applequist   ¹ , MA, PhD ;   Cristina Burroughs   ² , BSc ;   Peter A Merkel   ^{3, 4} , MPH, MD ;   Marc Rothenberg   ⁵ , MD, PhD ;   Bruce Trapnell   ⁶ , MD ;   Robert Desnick   ⁷ , MD, PhD ;   Mustafa Sahin   ⁸ , MD, PhD ;   Jeffrey Krischer   ² , PhD

¹ Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States

² Health Informatics Institute, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States

³ Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States

⁴ Division of Clinical Epidemiology, Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States

⁵ Allergy and Immunology, Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States

⁶ Department of Internal Medicine, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, United States

⁷ Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States

⁸ Rosamund Stone Zander Translational Neuroscience Center, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, United States