Shared Resources

Recruitment, Outcomes, and Assessment Resource (ROAR)

Director: Timothy Rebbeck, PhD

The goals of the Recruitment, Outcomes and Assessment Resource (ROAR) are to develop resources for population and clinical/transitional research that can enhance collaborative, multidisciplinary population research; enable observational, behavioral, clinical translation and interventional studies; and avoid inefficiency in the development and execution of these studies. The ROAR, which is led by Dr. Karen Glanz, is comprised of three interdigitated and coordinated components: The Research Implementation Component(RIC), the Recruitment, Retention and Outreach Component (RROC), and the Tumor Tissue and Biosample(TTAB) Component.

The purpose of the RIC is to facilitate the initiation and execution of patient-oriented research studies. Services provided by the RIC include:

• Creating informed consent documents; designing and testing questionnaires and other data collection instruments; and preparing project documentation.
• Assisting in implementing centralized participant eligibility assessment; and initial participant contact and eligibility assessment.
• Staff training and coordination to facilitate data collection, including obtaining and tracking informed consent, in-person and telephone interviewing, medical records abstraction, etc.

The purpose of the RROC is to provide assistance with development and implementation of recruitment and retention plans and materials. Services provided by the RROC include:

• Designing of brochures and recruitment materials
• Developing of media campaigns
• Tailoring informed consent to appropriate literacy levels
• Recruitment observation and feedback
• Assisting with recruitment budget planning

The purpose of TTAB is to provide a variety of services to support tissue biosampling. These services include sample preparation, aliquoting, database entry, quality assurance by a pathologist slide review to define lesion, amount of tumor and percent tumor necrosis in each aliquot collected as well as bar coding of samples. Services provided by TTAB include:

• Tissue Services:
  • Preparing snap frozen tumor/normal pairs
  • Preparing OCT frozen tumor/normal pairs
  • Preparing formalin fixed and paraffin embedded tumor/normal pairs
• Fluid Services
  • Prepare serum
  • Prepare plasma
  • Prepare buffy coat for genomic DNA
  • Whole blood
• Histology Services
  • Cutting frozen slides from OCT blocks
  • Cutting frozen tissue rolls from OCT blocks
  • Cutting slides fro paraffin blocks
  • Cutting tissue rolls from paraffin blocks
• Banking Services
  • Manage centrally stored biosample inventory
  • Create and support remote biosample inventories

Consultation Services

If you are interested in scheduling a free consultation meeting, please download and complete the request form. If you have any questions about the ROAR services, please contact the Technical Director, Kia Kerrin, MSW at wilsonk@mail.med.upenn.edu.