Today is the 40th anniversary of the Belmont Report, the foundational document on which our federal oversight system for human subjects research is based. This milestone warrants a pause in our busy day to reflect on its impact and its legacy. Read more
Last week, PRIM&R submitted comments in response to a request for information (RFI) on a draft report issued by the federal Working Group on Reducing Administrative Burden to Researchers for Animal Care and Use in Research. Comments on the draft report are due February 20, 2019, and we encourage you to consider submitting your own comments. The community is welcome to cite PRIM&R’s comments or borrow any of the points we make Read more
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently put out a "Request for Information on Modifying HIPAA Rules to Improve Coordinated Care." PRIM&R submitted comments encouraging HHS to take this opportunity to harmonize the HIPAA Rules with the Common Rule to improve it's use in the research context. The research community has long argued that HIPAA is confusing, awkward, inconsistent, and unnecessarily burdensome as applied to human subjects research. Read more
The 2018 Advancing Ethical Research Conference (AER18) was my second PRIM&R conference, and this year I came armed with questions for specific organizations and agencies. At the top of my list was a question regarding the 2015 NIH Genomic Data Sharing (GDS) Policy: When children’s data is submitted to a national genomic data sharing repository, such as the database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP), what are the consent expectations when those subjects reach the age of majority? Read more
The 2018 Advancing Ethical Research Conference (AER18) presentation titled “It’s Not as New as You Think: Understanding How to Operationalize the Revised Common Rule” provided information regarding the history of the Common Rule and the recent changes to it. It is important that IRB professionals and staff become familiar with these revisions, as they have important implications for the oversight and the conduct of medical research. Presenters Jeffrey A. Cooper, MD, MMM; Kristin Craun, MPH, CIP; Jessica Huening, JD; Heather Pierce, JD, MPH, helped to clarify much of the confusion concerning the recently revised regulations. Key changes in the revised Common Rule were emphasized. An important part of the presentation delineated what happens as these revised rules become effective. This was helpful in understanding how to transition from the “original” Common Rule to the revised Common Rule. Read more
PRIM&R recently submitted comments in response to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s proposed rule "Institutional Review Board Waiver or Alteration of Informed Consent for Minimal Risk Clinical Investigations," which was published in the Federal Register on November 15, 2018. Comments are due February 13. Read more
The teaching of ethical principles is included in many courses that train researchers on “responsible conduct of research”. The IRB 101sm preconference program at the 2018 Advancing Ethical Research Conference (AER18), however, was unique in describing the history of the development of modern research ethics, and then providing practical application in real research practice. Read more
