COVID-19 presents enormous challenges to research ethics oversight. Here, we’ve begun a collection of oversight-related resources in order to best prepare our community for the operational and review concerns brought on by the viral outbreak. Read more
On October 29, the Final NIH Policy for Data Management and Sharing was published. It will require “researchers to prospectively plan for how scientific data will be preserved and shared through submission of a Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Plan” and will apply to any NIH-funded or -conducted research that generates scientific data. It will be effective as of January 25, 2023. The final rule isn’t perfect: there is no mandate to share data, and grantees will need guidance on crucial questions of communicating these complex issues to participants. Nevertheless, the rule represents a positive step toward expanded, responsible sharing of data, which is critical to both good science and just treatment of research subjects. Read more
On September 17, 2020, PRIM&R hosted a webinar, IACUC Operations: Pandemic & Beyond. During this webinar, Dr. Stacy Pritt and Kathryn Cavanaugh, CPIA, shared various methods for conducting IACUC business electronically and virtually and explored employee engagement strategies for keeping IACUC staff connected during a remote work setting. Following the webinar, Stacy and Kathryn reflected on the session and attendee feedback; we're pleased to share their response with the readers of Ampersand. Read more
Meet Gretchen Parker, PhD, RAC, CIP, who'll be covering the 2020 Advancing Ethical Research Conference (AER20) as a member of the Blog Squad. Members of PRIM&R's conference Blog Squad provide an insider's view of the conferences by sharing their experience before, during, and after the meeting. Read more
Meet Myra Luna-Lucero, EdD, who'll be covering the 2020 Advancing Ethical Research Conference (AER20) as a member of the Blog Squad. Members of PRIM&R's conference Blog Squad provide an insider's view of the conferences by sharing their experience before, during, and after the meeting. Read more
Regulations state that at least every six months, the IACUC performs a program and facility review. I am not sure about your institutions, but at my institution, the announcement that these are coming up is often met with grumbles and jokes about being unavailable. Our program is not even that bad! We always get them done, and it is typically a smooth process with good discussions, but the fact remains that this just is not one of the IACUC’s favorite tasks, even though they understand the importance of it. I was excited to attend a session at IACUC20 to gather ideas for making the process better. Read more
Amid both promising and worrying signs in the development of treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, and in the context of a considerable amount of scrutiny of medical research, some researchers, ethicists, and advocates are working to make sure science doesn’t lose sight of a critical issue: diversity in the clinical trial participant pool. The distribution of research benefits to participants—and the consideration of race in subject selection—is tightly woven into the Belmont Report and has been a mainstay in research ethics discussion ever since. But despite the decades-long consideration of race and ethnicity in clinical trials, many trials still don’t enroll populations that reflect the diversity of the general populace or the group affected by the condition being studied. Read more
