Study design and participants
Cancer
RECRUITMENT, RECRUITMENT, CANCER
The CAPS randomised controlled trial was run at 37 community gardens in Denver and Aurora in Colorado, USA, administered by Denver Urban Gardens (DUG). Garden waiting lists were used as the basis for recruitment of study participants. These waiting lists were pre-existing at each of the gardens included in our study. Before recruitment began, study staff canvassed the surrounding neighbourhoods and partnered with neighbourhood-based organisations to raise awareness about the community gardens and encourage residents to become involved by joining their local community garden waiting list. After 6 weeks of garden promotion activities, study staff, in coordination with DUG staff, invited individuals on the garden waiting lists to join the study. Participants were eligible if they were aged 18 years or older, able to give consent in English or Spanish, had not gardened in the past 2 years, and were willing to not garden during the study period. Only one person per household could participate. Once individuals agreed to participate, study staff obtained written informed consent and conducted the baseline assessments, and participants were randomly assigned within garden waiting lists.Participant recruitment was done via both face-to-face and media-based approaches (ie, social media, radio, newspapers, newsletters and bulletins). Recruitment was conducted over three waves of data collection, with the aim of recruiting 104 participants per year for 3 years (ie, one wave per year). We aimed to recruit participants from low-income areas. Additional details about the trial design and rationale are described elsewhere.The study protocol was approved by the University of Colorado Boulder Institutional Review Board (UCB IRB; protocol number 16–0644) and monitored by the University of Colorado Cancer Center Data Safety and Monitoring Committee. All study participants provided written informed consent before enrolment and randomisation. All seven primary outcomes were approved on Nov 1, 2016, by the UCB IRB Office of Human Subjects.This study is registered with 