Participant recruitment during war: challenges and strategies from the longitudinal mental health assessment of the population study in Ukraine
Journal: AJE Advances Research in Epidemiology
Year: 2026

Abstract Conducting longitudinal cohort studies in war conditions is accompanied by a range of challenges. This article describes the recruitment and implementation process of a large, population-based longitudinal mental health study conducted in Ukraine during the war. We focus on the evolution of the recruitment strategy, four categories of challenges encountered—technical, security, personal, and socio-cultural, along with the solutions, and key lessons learned, while reporting the number of