Week A UW task force is looking for faculty input as it examines the structure and staffing of the University s human subjects operation, the unit that s responsible for ensuring the safety of people who participate in research studies. Click for larger. This graph shows the dramatic increase in number of applications submitted for human subjects review in the last five years. The workload of institutional review boards has doubled in that time.
Numbers reflect the total number of new applications, renewal applications and modifications.
But Parks emphasized that the review is not because UW research subjects have been endangered. That scrutiny, Parks explains, was brought on by serious problems in research programs at a number of universities, culminating in the death of a research subject last year at the University of Pennsylvania. Since that tragic event, Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala has published an essay on the importance of human subjects review in the New England Journal of Medicine and written a letter to university presidents expressing her deep concern about inadequacies in the current system for protection of human research subjects. She s also reorganized the federal office that oversees human subjects review, and more changes in the regulations are expected from that office. With all the turmoil at the federal level, it seemed like a good time to make sure we were up to snuff and wouldn t be hit with the same kinds of problems other universities have experienced, Parks says.