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their recruitment strategy. As of June 14, 2020, the Patient Experience Survey has had more than 13,000 individuals contribute data, representing more than 90 countries. Once the C19-GRA appeared to be gaining membership and momentum, email became an inefficient mode of communication so a Slack workspace was established. Based on an early model of internet communication--internet relay chat--Slack is a business communication platform with chat rooms organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging integrating with multiple document sharing formats (slack.com). After one week, the Slack group had over 200 participants, and currently has over 400 members. Medical trainees of all levels and backgrounds-epidemiologists, clinicians, patients, parents of children with rheumatic disease, and leaders of patients organizations- from around the world were invited to participate. Members have sent over 38,000 messages and shared over 1,300 files on Slack Access to Slack to multiple stakeholders democratized research participation on a global scale. The rheum-covid.org website was initially created to describe the project, seek support from rheumatology organizations, and promote the registries. It is the main gateway to both the physician-reported and patient-reported registries and provides information regarding ethical approval for our projects. Organizations that have confirmed official support of the C19-GRA are also featured on our website. Official supporters were asked to “broadcast the news about our registries to your organization, in hopes that as many patients can be added to the registry as quickly as possible.” At the time of this writing, 330 organizations from all areas of the globe are included as official supporters. As the C19-GRA registries data were analyzed and disseminated, links to all of the published manuscripts and media reports about the C19-GRA were created. As of June 5, the website has received 189,000 views from users in 163 countries The @rheum_covid Twitter account was created on March 14, 2020. Initially, the purpose of the Twitter account was to recruit individuals interested in assisting with the project, such as helping to translate the registry forms into different languages, or joining the Patient Board, as well as to seek support from rheumatology organizations from around the world. The account has also been used to disseminate data and links to published articles, giving rapid access to information during the pandemic. The physician-reported registry launched on March 24, with the first tweet reporting summary statistics reporting on COVID-19 outcomes among patients with rheumatic disease occurring 7 days later. The Twitter account was also useful to recruit patients with rheumatic disease for the Patient Experience Survey. The number of followers of the twitter account has grown to over 5,000 in three months From March 14 until May 31, 2020, the Twitter account has disseminated over 200 tweets that received a total of 7,593 likes and 4,144 retweets. The most engaging tweet during this time was regarding an early result from our project which revealed the lack of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in fully protecting patients against COVID-19, which received hundreds of likes and retweets Tweet from the C19-GRA addressing the lack of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in protecting patients against COVID-19. Users interested in the C19-GRA were invited to subscribe to a mailing list to receive general updates from the C19-GRA. In addition, patients who completed the Patient Experience Survey were also invited to subscribe to a separate mailing list that provides updates from the patient survey as well as information regarding future patient surveys.
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