Immunology

Awards for Excellence in Human Research Protection for 2013 were announced today by Dr. Peter G. Goldschmidt, President and Founder of the Health Improvement Institute.

Winner of the Annual Award for Innovation was the Professionalism and Integrity in Research Program for its P.I. Program Workshop. Created by Dr. James M. DuBois and colleagues at Saint Louis University and Washington University in St. Louis with funding from the National Institutes of Health, this serves as the first remediation program for researchers who engaged in wrongdoing or persistent noncompliance. The program was developed by a team of clinical, educational, industrial-organizational, and social psychologists, with guidance from experts in research ethics, regulations, and administration.

Winner of the Annual Award for Lifetime Achievement was Will C. van den Hoonaard. Dr. van den Hoonaard has served the research-ethics community in various capacities including the Canadian Interagency Panel on Research Ethics, involvement in research-ethics journals, numerous guest lectures, and author and editor of several books. Dr. van den Hoonaard is Professor Emeritus at the University of New Brunswick, and Research Associate at the Atlantic Centre for Qualitative Research and Analysis, Saint Thomas University. Both universities are located in Fredericton, NB, Canada.

Recipients of an Award of Excellence for Best Practice included:

Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Office of Research Compliance & Quality Improvement. Cedars-Sinai developed a policy aimed at facilitating enrollment in minimal risk data registries by allowing for an online consent process for internet-based data registries.

The Center for Information and Study on Clinical Research Participation (CISCRP). The non-profit CISCRP launched a groundbreaking program to ensure that the results of clinical trials are shared with the study volunteers who make research possible. CISCRP's Communicating Trial Results program is now being implemented by over 20 leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, helping to fulfill the research enterprise's ethical obligation to share trial findings, and demonstrating a commitment to volunteers as true partners in the research process.

Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics. Children's Mercy started the Pilot Translation Project, involving protecting the rights of research subjects with LEP (Limited English Proficiency) and increasing the opportunity for LEP subjects to participate in available research studies.