Developing a Participant-Focused Educational Podcast to Enhance Engagement in the Cure Glomerulopathy (CureGN) Study Cohort
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: CureGN is an NIH-funded longitudinal cohort study that has enrolled over 2,000 research participants. Engagement is fundamental to encourage retention and to provide value and education to participants. Previous initiatives including newsletters and online “fireside chats” had low participation rates. Methods: An audio podcast was trialed and evaluated to enhance participant education and engagement. Kidney Chats by CureGN, developed by CureGN’s Recruitment and Retention workgroup, launched October 2023. The educational series on glomerular disease topics is accessed on multiple platforms (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, web search); themed episodes are clearly titled by topic. A study participant interviews an expert on a topic suggested by participants. Initial topics included nutrition and prednisone. Newsletters introduce a topic and point readers to the podcast for more in-depth information via a QR code. Social media promotes the podcast. Results: Three episodes have launched ranging from 16 to 31 minutes long, with new episodes planned at a two-to-three-month cadence. 86 downloads/listens have been logged, surpassing performance of fireside chats in a much shorter amount of time. The podcast reaches participants across all age ranges, with particular strength in ages 28 to 34 and over 60. Listenership by gender is 52% female, 41% male, and the remaining non-binary or not specified. Listeners hail largely from the US, with 77% located in the US. Another 12% tuned in from Germany, 7% from Canada, and 4% from other locations. Conclusion: For CureGN, an integrated communications strategy that incorporates a highly accessible medium as its centerpiece effectively disseminates relevant research to participants, as well as topics addressing lifestyle topics and helping participants find community by hearing others’ lived experiences with kidney disease. Funding: NIDDK SupportFireside chat attendance vs podcast listenership - #1 #2 #3 #4 Total to date Fireside chat attendance* 8 9 9 10 36 Podcast downloads/listens** 47 28 11 (to come) 86 *estimated **continues to grow weekly
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.034 | 0.041 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.020 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".