IRB Member Spotlight

Michelle Ciucci, PhD, has been the Vice-Chair of Panel E since April 2021. Michelle is with the Division of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery within the Department of Surgery. Her research focuses on improvement of treatments for communication and swallowing disorders in progressive neurologic disease.

In her spare time, Michelle loves to travel, especially if she is able to bring her 2 daughters to new places. In the summer, you can find Michelle camping and hiking, while in the winter, cooking, reading, and movie-watching are frequent activities. Favorite quote for academic writings: Mark Twain “if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

IRB Staff Updates

The IRB office has welcomed several new people in the last few months!

Kate Knudson, MA, joins us from the School of Nursing and began as an IRB analyst with the MRR team member at the end of August.

Hillary Keller, JD, came from private practice in Alabama to join the Reliant group in August.

Nathan Putman – Buehler, M.S., is transitioning from the Department of Biochemistry to the IRB on November 18th as a member of both Reliant & the HS IRB team.

Sara Dietz, will become part of the Reliant & HSIRB team on November 28th. Prior to joining us she served as a Clinical Research Project Coordinator of multi-site infectious disease studies for the Department of Medicine.

Unfortunately, the IRB Director position remains open after two unsuccessful searches. The search will resume after the first of the year. Until then, Lynn Haynes continues as Interim Director with the help of Casey Pellien and Catherine Rogers.

Reviewing Minutes: New Look- Same Process!

Minutes from each meeting are ratified at the next meeting of the same panel. Minutes are assigned two reviewers who are responsible for ensuring that the minutes are accurate and complete and recommending whether the minutes can be accepted as proposed or accepted with revisions that they outline. IRB members are only assigned to review minutes for meetings they attend.

With our last ARROW patch, we updated how minutes are completed in ARROW and this will impact how minutes look to members during their review.

  • Regulatory determinations documented in checklists in ARROW will no longer be detailed in the body of the minutes. Rather,
  • The text of the minutes will include the regulatory determination made and refer to the checklist for the specifics. For example:
    • The IRB found that all required elements of consent are included in the consent form, which is written so that it can be used to obtain assent from older adolescents as well as to obtain parent/guardian permission. The assent/consent form was found to be approvable. See HRP-416 for regulatory determinations and protocol-specific findings relevant to the parental permission and assent process.
  • At the end of the minutes, you will see a hyperlink to each checklist that was referenced in relation to that submission. Clicking on the hyperlink will take you to that specific checklist, which is appended to the bottom of the minutes document.
  • After reviewing the checklist, simply scroll back up to review the remainder of the minutes.

We will be demonstrating the new minutes look at each panel meeting in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, please feel free to reach out to your panel administrator with any questions.

HRPP Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Working Group and DEI Resources

To better integrate DEI initiatives into the Human Research Protection Program (HRPP), the HRPP has created a DEI working group. The working group is starting with an internal needs assessment, and will then work with HRPP leadership to prioritize gaps to address. IRB Members can expect additional information and greater engagement in the future around DEI.

In the meantime, we would like to highlight a few research and IRB focused DEI resources:

The Professional Research Education Program (PREP) has several recorded trainings related to DEI, including:

  • Recruitment: Building Trust Between Minorities and Researchers (2019) — Sue Passmore, ICTR
  • Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center: A Model of Engagement That Worked (2020) — Hector Salazar, SMPH
  • Engaging with LGBTQ+ Populations in Research (2021) — Stephanie Budge, Counseling Psychology
  • Disability, Inclusion, and Accessibility for Researchers (2022) — Ruben Mota, Office of Compliance
  • Introduction to Community-Based Research (2022) — Haley Madden & Cory Sprinkel, Morgridge Center for Public Service
  • Building Stronger Communities and Research Programs with Equity and Inclusion (2022) — Gina Green-Harris, Center for Community Engagement and Health Partnerships

All PREP training records can be found under “Recordings of Live Courses” on the PREP website.

OHRP’s Luminaries Lecture Series has several DEI-related presentation recordings, and the current featured topic is justice. We would like to call attention to the May 2022 OHRP Research Community Forum keynote Improving Health Equity in Clinical Research by Jonathan Jackson, PhD.

Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) is a nonprofit that works to ensure the highest ethical standards in research by providing education and other professional resources to the research and research oversight community. PRIM&R has a collection of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice resources, including blog posts, webinars, conference recordings, podcasts, and more.

2023 Meeting Schedules Set

Our office administrator and scheduler extraordinaire, Aly VanDerWeide, has been hard at work slotting IRB members into meeting dates for all of 2023. As you can imagine, this is no easy feat! At this point, all members should have received their meeting schedules and calander holds for the entire year. This process depends on timely responses to Aly via the IRBReview service email account so as soon as you become aware of a scheduling issue or a meeting you will not be able to attend, please let her know. If we do not hear from you when asked to confirm attendance we assume you will attend and you may be assigned reviews.

**Please respond to ALL scheduling emails!**

July 1 evaluation cycle 

All members should have now received their annual IRB member evaluation, required as part of our accreditation and to comply with federal regulations. Thank you to all of our IRB members for your time and commitment to the IRB- we appreciate it so much!

If you have not already completed the IRB member satisfaction survey, please take a few moments to do so now. We greatly value your input.

AAHRPP Reaccreditation

During the September meeting of the AAHRPP Council on Accreditation, UW-Madison was awarded full accreditation status. AAHRPP accreditation represents that UW-Madison’s human research protection program meets rigorous standards for quality and protection. Thank you to everyone who assisted with the reaccreditation process and to everyone involved in maintaining a high-quality program!