More Than Joint Pain: Recruiting PsA Patients as They Really Live
How we built a five-city patient recruitment that captured eye, nail, and skin symptoms, working life, and the severity that treatment can hide.
A pharmaceutical company wanted to understand the physical, psychological, and treatment needs of people with psoriatic arthritis (PsA), as well as how the condition affects life at home, at work, and in public.
The brief called for 60-minute in-person interviews across Chicago, New York, London, Paris, and Berlin.
Screening criteria:
Diagnosed with PsA at least six months ago
Managed by a rheumatologist or dermatologist
Moderate to severe at diagnosis
On prescription therapy, split roughly evenly between advanced therapies and DMARDs
Aged 18 to 65
No significant comorbidities, such as cancer or serious mental health conditions
Quotas handled two risks. First, treatment can make patients look mild, so no more than 40% per interview day could currently be considered mild. Second, to keep working life in the conversation, no more than a third could be unemployed, including retired patients and those on disability.
Soft quotas targeted a spread of symptoms beyond the joints: at least three patients with eye involvement, nine with nail involvement and three with dactylitis, plus a mix of age, income and gender.
Before their interview, patients completed a homework exercise in which they chose images that captured how PsA had changed their daily lives. Moderators built on these with scenarios and good-day/bad-day exercises.
The result was a recruit designed to reflect PsA as patients live it.
