Recruiting people facing social disadvantage: the experience of the Free Meds study.

Background: Researching access to health services, and ways to improve equity, frequently requires researchers to recruit people facing social disadvantage. Recruitment can be challenging, and there is limited high quality evidence to guide researchers. This paper describes experiences of recruiting 1068 participants facing social disadvantage for a randomised controlled trial of prescription charges, and provides evidence on the advantages and disadvantages of recruitment methods.