Exploring drop-out in the UK’s largest health research programme for Our Future Health

Our Future Health is the UK’s largest ever health research programme, enabling the discovery and testing of more effective prevention, detection, and treatment of diseases.

We’ve worked with Our Future Health over the last few years on multiple projects to support their mission. This year we partnered for qualitative research to understand why some volunteers who register with Our Future Health do not then consent to booking a blood sample and measurement appointment at one of their local clinics. And to understand a further group who do consent, but then don’t book appointments. 

Our approach was informed by the COM-B model of behaviour change, which allowed us to understand decision making, while focusing on the practical aspects of behaviour. After exploring and understanding behavioural patterns across the two groups, we categorised the common themes into the COM-B. 

Advancing science and contributing to the health of the UK’s population (reflective motivation) were two of the key reasons why people decided to take part and complete further stages of the programme. On the other hand, the locations and accessibility of the clinics (physical opportunity) were seen as barriers.

Our analysis found further nuances, such as how the number of clinics available for COVID-19 campaigns (especially at the pandemic’s peak) might be shaping the expectations how many clinics should be available for Our Future Health. We also found some people joined with the expectation that clinics would be available everywhere with appointments available at all times, partly due to previous experiences of similar programmes.

Among several suggestions to address the challenges, our analysis highlighted using behavioural science-informed approaches to reset people’s expectations at programme start, as well as optimising comms rooted in social norms, relatedness, and authority heuristics.