New Report: Public’s Role in Health Research

Posted by on July 25, 2003

[posted from CCPH]

IOM RELEASES REPORT ON PUBLIC’S ROLE IN HEALTH RESEARCH

Trust, communication and education are the biggest obstacles to creating more “participant-centered research” within the health research enterprise, according to the latest workshop report from the Institute of Medicine’s Clinical Research Roundtable. The Roundtable concludes that the public is supportive of clinical research but does not know much about how it is conducted. They also note that researchers should step up their own efforts to encourage active public participation in the clinical enterprise, since public participation has the potential to improve the relevance and quality of their data.

The report summarizes the benefits of participant-centered health research and offers some suggestions for increasing the public’s role, from community grants to incentives for new researchers. It also contains a plea for more research on ways to improve the translation and communication of health research results.

Workshop participants suggest that the public has a part to play in research oversight as well. In particular, they recommend that review boards charged with overseeing the ethics of research on human subjects should include nonscientific members.

To read or order a copy of the report online, go to http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10757.html

For more resources on community-based participatory research, community-campus partnerships and community scholarship, visit these pages on the CCPH website:
http://www.futurehealth.ucsf.edu/ccph/commbas.html
http://www.futurehealth.ucsf.edu/ccph/partnerships.html
http://www.futurehealth.ucsf.edu/ccph/scholarship.html