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It is imperative to the study of aging that there are older adults volunteering for researh. The Healthy Minds Volunteer Corps has been a great resource for researchers to get in touch with a pool of people willing to participate. While we now have 800+ people join the Corps, we have a strict policy of only contacting people as often as they speficy they want to be contacted. Also, only a fraction of those 800+ are older adults - thus the need to recruit and expand.

 

It has been difficult recruiting older adults, especially for studies that have exclusions. We understand it may make some, who have never participated in research, uneasy. It is our hopes though that enough people will at the very least allow us to answer their questions. The safety of participating will always be our number one concern, as well as the concern of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) who oversee human subjects research. We would never do anything without informed consent, which means you can at any time during the study discontinue participating. Signing up for the Healthy Minds Volunteer Corps would mean that you are indicating an interest in participating. You would be allowing us to contact you tell you more about a study that needs participants but you are in no way obligated to participate.

 

Having addressed the hesitance issue, we still have the difficult task of gaining exposure to the Greater Los Angeles/Southern California senior citizen community more likely to be interested. A large majority of the Corps are USC alumi or retired staff. We've had some success through Craigslist and by visiting Senior Centers but we've started reaching the end of the barrel with those approaches. We have volunteer post on several websites such as VolunteerMatch.org. We've also tried an ad in the LA times with only about 30 or so people call in and only about half or so interested in joining the Corps. Would anyone suggest an ad on AARP's California website? We have considered printing an ad with the AARP Magazine but it seems like we wouldn't get the specific regional exposure we need. We've tried older adult forums and have been marked as spam. We are not trying to solicit but merely gain exposure and as we are a non-profit minimizing costs is also a goal and so we ask to those who are reading, what are the best places to recruit older adults? Where do older adults spend most of their time? When would they more likely be open to listening to our cause?

 

If anyone is interested in joining, please visit our website: http://www.usc.edu/dept/gero/participate/