New Leadership Announcements

We are very excited to share that after two failed searches, we are now able to announce that our very own Lisa Wilson will be assuming this role of IRB Director in an interim capacity (the position will be reposted later this year with the hope that Lisa will apply for the role). I believe everyone knows Lisa but if not, she is currently Senior University Legal Counsel with a primary focus on HRPP/IRB/FDA regulations and in that capacity has worked with the IRB committee and office since 2003. In addition to her expertise in human subjects regulations, Lisa has also led and continues to lead a number of projects with intersections between the UW HRPP program (especially around data sharing and HIPAA regulations) and UWHC (especially around contracts with their expanding portfolio of affiliate organizations). Finally, I think that anyone who has had the pleasure of working with Lisa also knows that she is a genuinely wonderful person. We are all very excited for Lisa to join the team on Feb. 1!

We have also hired a new Associate Director of Quality, Compliance and Reliance- Travis Doran. Travis is another familiar face to many of you as he has been a Quality and Compliance Analyst and previously a Post-Approval Monitor in the Office of Research Compliance since 2015 and it often in attendance at IRB meetings in this role. Travis led our AAHRPP re-accreditation efforts this past year, including our successful (fully remote!) site visit and manages our entire Toolkit library including overseeing all bi-annual updates. In his new role, which he officially began on January 9th, he will oversee the Quality Compliance Analysts as well as the Reliant team. We look forward to being able to continue to work closely with Travis in his new role.

Last but not least, we would like to thank Lynn Haynes, Catherine Rogers, and Casey Pellien for stepping in the past several months and providing leadership to the office while we searched for our new director!

2022 Year-end Metrics

The end of 2022 marks a major milestone in that the bulk of the IRB Efficiency Project work has been completed and we were reaccredited by the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP). Over the past two years, we have implemented many major changes, from reorganization of the IRB offices and boards, to a complete overhaul of our applications, guidance documents, and websites. This was no small feat and IRB staff, members, and the entire research community have been a critical part in making these changes a success. Key improvements were use of the toolkit to guide systematic review, the development of the protocol-based application, which significantly reduced duplicative information in the application and the streamlined non-protocol-based application with even more templated language. Our changes are paying dividends: median time to first comments for full board studies in 2022 is 10 days compared to historical median of 22 days and median time from submission to approval is now 45 days compared to historical averages of 72 days!

Congratulations to HS Panel E Member Tamara Kempken Mehring!

UW Health’s Tamara Kempken Mehring was recently named the recipient of the 2022 Distinguished Clinical Research Nurse Award by the International Association of Clinical Research Nurses (IACRN). See the full article here.

We are lucky to have Tamara’s expertise on the IRB.