The Health Influencer-Interactor Framework: Enhancing participant retention in health research through strategic marketing integration

Health research participation attrition limits research success, resulting in revenue losses, sample bias, and an inability to accurately generalize results. A systematic framework is needed to enable health marketers to combine psychosocial motivators from citizen science and online influencer marketing to drive sustained research participation. The Health Influencer-Interactor Framework (HIIF) is a theoretically-based architecture that integrates these motivators into recruitment strategy, communication messaging and online influence to attain higher research retention rates. This paper presents the underpinning foundations of the HIIF and illustrates its application through a urinary microbiome research case study. Participants recruited via influencer channels (21.51% retention, N = 188) exhibited higher retention rates than non-influencer-recruited participants (11.01% retention, N = 127). The HIIF addresses the growing need for social influence-based digital solutions in health research marketing, offering a theoretically-informed approach that substantially contributes to more efficient clinical trials and health studies. Findings should be interpreted as associative evidence within a single case context rather than causal validation of the framework.