Heart failure & cardiomyopathies
Underserved communities at risk of heart failure: effectiveness of community-based recruitment strategies and burden of unrecognised cardiovascular disease
- Prospective cohort study
- community-based pilot study
+1 more
- community-based pilot study
Authors' conclusion
Primary care-embedded and digital recruitment strategies can effectively engage underserved communities at risk of HF, at scale and at low cost. This population has a very high burden of unrecognised CVD.
Study context
- Population
- Adults aged ≥50 years with two or more cardiometabolic risk factors and no prior diagnosis of HF, recruited in primary care and the communityadults enrolled · Primary care 444 (81%) · Digital advertising 68 (12%) · Community outreach events 5 (1%)
- Participants
- 550 adults
- Exposure
- Effectiveness of recruitment strategies for engaging underserved populations
- Primary caren = 444 (81%)
- Digital advertisingn = 68 (12%)
- Community outreach eventsn = 5 (1%)
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Deprivation and ethnicity of participants
From the most deprived Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) quintile
185 (34%)
Non-White ethnicity
97 (18%)
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Further findings
| Outcome | Primary care | Digital advertising | Community outreach events | Direct referral | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enrolment by recruitment strategy | 81% | 12% | 1% | Not reported in the abstract | Direct referral: not reported in the abstract |
Enrolment by recruitment strategy
- Primary care and digital advertising were the most effective recruitment strategies, while maintaining diverse representation
- Community outreach events were resource intensive
Social media campaign
- Advertisement clicks
- 15,207
- Expressions of interest
- 1,012
- Cost per sign-up
- £5.93
Burden of previously unrecognised CVD · baseline
- Clinically actionable cardiac abnormalities
- 125 (23%)
- Uncontrolled blood pressure (≥140/90 mmHg)
- 331 (60%)
- Elevated NT-proBNP (≥125 pg/ml)
- 162 (30%)
- Previously unrecognised myocardial infarction (of 550 participants) 46 (9%)
Original publication
Underserved communities at risk of heart failure: effectiveness of community-based recruitment strategies and burden of unrecognised cardiovascular disease. Eur J Heart Fail. Published 13 October 2026. doi:10.1093/ejhf/xuag315
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it