When our client approached us to recruit participants currently using GLP-1 weight management medications for an anonymous online survey, the brief was clear, but far from simple.
Working within a sensitive health space always requires a careful balance. It’s not just about reaching the right audience, but doing so in a way that protects participant experience, maintains trust, and delivers data you can genuinely rely on.
In these contexts, a wide net isn’t always the right approach. What matters more is being deliberate in who you reach, how you engage them, and how their data is handled from start to finish.
Recruiting people actively using GLP-1 medications meant navigating both specificity and sensitivity.
On one hand, we needed to reach a clearly defined medical cohort. On the other, we needed to ensure that every response came from a real, engaged individual, not someone rushing through a survey for the incentive.
In a space that’s growing quickly, with increasing public awareness and demand, maintaining that level of authenticity becomes even more important. It also means recognising that participants aren’t just data points, they’re individuals sharing something personal, and the process needs to reflect that.
We kept the entire recruitment process in-house, drawing from our network of over 270,000 participants. That decision wasn’t just operational, it was intentional. For a topic like this, control matters. It allows us to be more selective in how we reach people, more thoughtful in how we engage them, and more confident in the quality of the data that comes back.
Rather than pushing the study out broadly, we were careful and considered in how it was distributed within our network. That more targeted approach helps ensure participants feel comfortable taking part, while also protecting the integrity of the responses.
Our healthcare specialists supported on survey wording and data handling protocols, helping to ensure the research was not only robust, but appropriate for the audience. It meant we weren’t just collecting data, we were doing it in a way that respected the people behind it.
Alongside this, our Data Specialist carried out detailed quality checks post-fieldwork, removing and replacing any responses that didn’t meet our standards. It’s a step we build in as standard, but one that becomes even more important when working within sensitive subject areas where trust and accuracy go hand in hand.
While a full week had been allocated for data collection, the required completes were achieved within just three days. We then allowed time for thorough quality control before delivering the final dataset, complete with data tables, a full day ahead of schedule.
More importantly, the quality held up. The client received a clean, reliable dataset and the confidence that the participants behind it were exactly who they needed them to be.
This project is a good example of what happens when you treat fieldwork as more than just a numbers exercise.
Keeping recruitment in-house gave us control. Bringing in healthcare expertise ensured the research was handled appropriately. Building in robust quality checks meant the final output could be trusted.
Just as importantly, it reflects the kind of relationship we aim to build with our clients. Not transactional, but collaborative.
When you’re working with a partner who understands the nuances of your audience and the responsibility that comes with sensitive research, it allows you to focus on the insight itself, rather than worrying about how the data was gathered.
GLP-1 medications may be dominating headlines, but the most meaningful shifts are happening away from the spotlight, in the quiet adjustments people are making to their everyday lives.
When we speak to individuals who are actually using these medications, the conversation rarely centres on dramatic transformation. Instead, it revolves around a change in pace and perception. Appetite feels different. Cravings are less urgent. Decisions that once felt automatic, particularly around food and spending, become more considered. That recalibration of instinct might seem subtle on an individual level, yet when experienced at scale, it begins to reshape patterns of consumption in ways that brands cannot afford to ignore.
For organisations operating across food, drink, retail, beauty and healthcare, this is not simply a weight management trend to monitor from a distance. It represents a behavioural shift unfolding in real time. Basket composition evolves. Portion expectations adjust. Indulgence, functionality and value are being reassessed through a different lens. What feels relevant in a world of reduced impulse may not look the same as it did even two years ago.
At the same time, the surrounding landscape adds further complexity. Private prescribing continues to grow, NHS capacity remains stretched, and alternative supply routes are emerging with their own ethical and regulatory concerns. Meanwhile, secondary markets are forming around side effects, aesthetic changes and nutritional optimisation, signalling that GLP-1 is influencing far more than appetite alone.
What makes this moment particularly significant is its steadiness. These are not overnight shifts driven by hype. They are incremental behavioural adjustments that, taken together, have meaningful commercial and cultural implications.
In our latest podcast episode, we explore what people are really telling us about life on GLP-1 medications and what those lived experiences mean for brands seeking to remain relevant in a changing environment.
Over the past 20 years, we’ve delivered all our healthcare research under the wider Acumen umbrella. From patient studies to work involving healthcare professionals and clinical environments, it’s been some of the most complex, sensitive and rewarding fieldwork we’ve supported.
What became increasingly clear is that healthcare isn’t just another sector sitting neatly alongside the rest. It operates differently to the consumer market. The regulatory landscape is tighter, the documentation requirements are more rigorous, and the conversations themselves often carry real emotional weight.
Rather than treating healthcare fieldwork as a bolt-on specialism, we decided it deserved its own focus.
That’s why we’ve launched Acumen Health.
Acumen Health is our dedicated arm built specifically for healthcare fieldwork, underpinned by compliance-led processes, in-house project delivery and teams who understand the nuance of working in clinical and regulated settings.
For us, this isn’t about creating something separate from who we are. It’s about refining and strengthening what we were already doing well. The principles of our fieldwork haven’t changed, meticulous recruitment, secure data practices and rigorous delivery have always been part of how we work. Acumen Health simply gives that expertise a clearer home.
At the same time, we’re conscious that healthcare research must never lose its human core. Behind every brief are patients, professionals and lived experiences that deserve respect. The operational side matters enormously, but so does tone, sensitivity and trust.
Acumen Health brings those elements together in one clear, intentional offer. It represents our continued investment in raising standards within healthcare fieldwork, and our commitment to delivering research that is rigorous, responsible and genuinely people-first.
We’re incredibly proud to see it formally launch and excited about what comes next.
You can visit Acumen Health by clicking here.
Overview
We were commissioned to recruit 10 pairs of Parkinson’s patients and their carers for paired interviews trialling a new “care companion” support app.
The goal was to understand how patients and carers communicate day-to-day and explore how digital tools could improve connection, coordination, and care.
The Challenge
This wasn’t your average recruitment brief.
We needed to find pairs who:
Reaching this audience required sensitivity, trust, and creativity, especially when approaching those in later stages of Parkinson’s or outside of established research networks.
Our Approach
We combined the reach of our in-house online community of over 275,000 participants with targeted outreach through Parkinson’s charities, local support groups, and community organisations.
Tailored social media campaigns also helped us to connect with patients and carers where they already engage, from Facebook groups to local community pages.
At every stage, we prioritised sensitivity, transparency and accessibility to ensure participants felt comfortable and supported.
The Outcome
Despite the complex brief, we successfully recruited all 10 pairs to specification. Each participant was eager to contribute to a project that could help improve daily life for people living with Parkinson’s and their carers.
Beyond the numbers, this project reinforced what fieldwork is really about: connection, empathy, and persistence.
When you take the time to reach the right people and create a safe space for sharing their experiences, that’s when the most meaningful insights naturally emerge.
Acumen have worked with Solutions Strategy Research Facilitation Ltd (Solutions Research) for over a decade, working on complex, sensitive and high-impact projects in healthcare, supporting them with participant recruitment.
Recently, we caught up with Michelle, Managing Director of Solutions Research, to reflect on our partnership and how thoughtful, well-managed participant recruitment helps power their work.
We asked her a couple of questions and here’s what she had to say…
Solutions is a full-service market research agency that works on projects that make a positive difference to people’s lives. We work on a range of social and sensitive issue projects, often with a focus on health.
We have worked on a range of topics from identifying health conditions, the journey of living with health conditions, vaccination uptake, screening uptake, to public health behaviours, tackling vaping and substance misuse.
We’ve also worked on related topics such as domestic abuse, VAWG and hate crime. We deliver a lot of campaign research as well as attitudinal and behavioural projects.
Finding the ‘right’ people is always a challenge as there are often a range of different criteria that overlay e.g. health condition, social grade, income, area of the country, gender, attitude. It’s never a ‘simple’ recruit; plus making sure people are happy to talk in research and really understand what the research is going to be about and how it is going to be used – this is all really important to us in the recruitment process.
I actually think that good recruitment isn’t just about finding the right people, it’s about getting them engaged in the research project and ready to take part – if that is done well (which is always is with you) then it makes our job easier, and also makes the whole process run smoothly from a participant process.
Critical – important decisions are being made on the basis of research findings and therefore having the right participants is central to the project.
Mostly in healthcare it is finding the right participants and encouraging people who are not familiar with research to come forward. We always like to have fresh respondents who haven’t attended much research before; and often the hard-to-reach people that we need haven’t engaged in research before and it’s important to us to access them.
Research is very competitive at the moment, and I think having a solid, well thought through, audience centric recruitment approach does help when tendering for new work.
You help us throughout the process from the quotation stage when we pass our ideas past you as a sense check (to ensure we don’t recommend something unachievable), then through recruitment screener development, recruitment, taking people through the consent process and delivering after care with respondents
We have recently worked on some tough topics with very tricky recruitment which have required very specific recruitment criteria, and the attention to detail has been fantastic; also by really understanding the intricacies of the brief and who we need as participants, Acumen have been able to assess participants and how well they fit, rather than just how they might appear at face value.
Acumen been flexible and proactive in accessing a range of different routes to find the right participants and also we’ve had open and honest conversations about challenging recruits, and helped us find ways to reconsider the brief and provide options to our clients.
It means that we know we are getting to the right people and can have confidence in who we are talking to, so we can focus on the ‘research bit’
Super nice and friendly team, great recruitment outcomes, honesty about what is and isn’t achievable, that you are happy to think creatively about different ways of getting to the right people; and that you put up with me saying ‘what if we did this….’
Having close regular communication and sharing of anonymised participant details during recruitment really helps us keep close to recruitment, and inform our client
I think participant engagement is very important as it ensures participants come to research ‘warmed up’ and happy to take part – this is particularly important on sensitive issues, and we welcome your personal approach.
I think it impacts at various levels – it means our research findings can be trusted as we have the right people in the room; the excellent project management process means we are kept up to date and there are no surprises (well as few as possible!) and this helps the project run smoothly administratively
Professional and friendly (Sorry, that’s two!)
Yes (I already have!)
The Study
Acumen’s Healthcare fieldwork team were approached by an independent research agency, to find participants for a study they were conducting on behalf of a pharmaceutical company. The research was intended to explore the pathway to recovery for people with Hepatitis C, who also inject drugs, and what potential barriers to treatment they might experience.
To understand these issues, the research agency wanted to meet with an expert panel, in a single session in which they brought together key stakeholders within the field and experts in the treatment of Hepatitis C. The intended panel was to consist of Hepatologists, GP’s and Prison GP’s, Specialist Hepatology Nurses, BBV Nurses, Drug and Charity Workers and Community Pharmacists.
Our Approach
The main challenge with this project was not only finding participants who matched the specific, and sometimes niche, profiles that the client had specified but also ensuring they were based in the geographical area that the research was taking place in at the time they were needed.
To begin, the healthcare fieldwork team assessed the feasibility of the project by analysing the overall numbers of people who matched the criteria on their in-house database. From there they were able to estimate the total number of contacts they would need to meet the clients criteria. After making initial contact with potential participants on the database the team began researching organisations and companies who might interact with the participants needed. The team were then able to identify new potential participants and offer finder’s fees for those making contact on their behalf.
The team also used third party databases and community forums to advertise the research which enabled them to identify further participants who might not have necessarily taken part in this kind of research forum before.
As with all research on sensitive subjects it is essential that the fieldwork team are transparent on the purpose and details of the project so that all participants are engaging with the project with full and free consent. As many of the participants on this project were already professionally and personally engaged with the subject matter the team at Acumen were able to recruit all of the stakeholders the client wanted to meet with.
The Study
Acumen were asked by a research agency to help with a project they were conducting on behalf of a Biopharmaceutical company. The company were seeking feedback on a new app that had developed to provide support and information to people with a range of respiratory problems.
The app, which had been designed for smartphone users, had a number of features including the ability to capture and monitor data on how patients are using their inhalers. In order to test this functionality, Acumen were asked to find participants who suffered with Asthma, and had been diagnosed over various periods of time, in addition to people living with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD). All of the participants had to be using different types of inhalers in order to fully assess their user experience of the new app.
An additional element of the research involved recruiting Healthcare professionals from a variety of disciplines and specialisms. These included: Respiratory consultants; GP’s; and Nurses who specialised in respiratory ailments or were Practice Nurses working within a respiratory clinic.
Our Approach
Acumen’s Healthcare fieldwork market research team have an extensive in-house database with participants who’ve signed up to take part in market research studies. It contains healthcare professionals of all levels and specialisms in addition to information on people who have been diagnosed with a range of conditions. For a project like this, the database that the Healthcare team have built up, is an invaluable resource.
In addition to this, the team also used their presence on social media to target people who were likely to meet one or more of the quotas required for this study. Social media is an ideal resource for research that requires participants who are comfortable with smartphones and technology.
Utilising these two methods enabled the team to draw on a large pool of potential participants who were then carefully screened to ensure they all met the criteria specified by the client. The challenge on this project was in finding people who were local to the area the research was taking place in, but the combination of the team’s database and their presence online enabled them to find all the participants the client wanted to speak to.
