Challenges and strategies for cohort retention and data collection in an indigenous population: Australian Aboriginal Birth Cohort

Table 2 Aboriginal Birth Cohort: strategies used to address locating challenges

Aim	Responding strategies
To find participants
Rural	Key significant people identified in each large community and employed
Rural	List of cohort members thought to be in community sent to them requesting confirmation of participant presence
Urban	Door to door visits yielded best results
Urban	Letter useful
To positively identify participants	Multiple personal identifiers including unique hospital number, name, sex, date of birth and community residence at time of birth
	Showing photograph to community members
	Recording of aliases on spread sheet
	Key Aboriginal community assistants employed with local knowledge of community movements
	Visits to remote communities with strong kinship ties scheduled close together
To use personal images	All participants sign individual consents for image photograph to be taken and for photograph to be used for promotion, publicity and tracing