New Article: Ethical Goals of Community Consultation in Research

Posted by on August 5, 2005

[posted from Community Based Participatory Research listserv]

The latest issue of American Journal of Public Health (Vol. 95, No. 7) features an article that may be of interest.

Ethical Goals of Community Consultation in Research
Neal Dickert, BA and Jeremy Sugarman, MD, MPH, MA
Am J Public Health 2005 95: 1123-1127.

http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/95/7/1123

Abstract

In response to the traditional emphasis on the rights, interests, and well-being of individual research subjects, there has been growing attention focused on the importance of involving communities in research development and approval.

Community consultation is a particularly common method of involving communities. However, the fundamental ethical goals of community consultation have not been delineated, which makes it difficult for investigators, sponsors, and institutional review boards to design and evaluate consultation efforts.

Community consultation must be tailored to the communities in which it is conducted, but the purposes of consultation?the ethical goals it is designed to achieve?should be universal. We propose 4 ethical goals that give investigators, sponsors, institutional review boards, and communities a framework for evaluating community consultation processes.