AAHRPP Activities - 2019 Q4

By: Heather Bridge

We continue to update AAHRPP (the accrediting body for the Human Research Protection Program) on the progress of the consolidation of the IRBs and streamlining of IRB operations. Our status last report in November showed significant progress over the past year since Jonathan Green and Tiffany Gommel joined OHSRP and stood up IRBO.  We have more to do, but we are confident the accrediting body will see that we are making great strides towards our goal of a centralized IRB and streamlined operations. 

We are preparing for the AAHRPP Annual Report, which is due in March 2020. As with previous years, we collect fiscal year data for the annual reports. We kicked off data collection in October by requesting IC QAQI data. The CC Office of Research Support and Compliance (ORSC) assists OHSRP with QAQI data collection and assessment. This year, working with OHSRP, ORSC developed a new QAQI survey to collect the needed QAQI data for AAHRPP. In addition, and they will assist us with the assessment of QAQI activities in the ICs. The remainder of the AAHRPP data collection will start in January 2020 from the ICs and from IRBO. Due to the consolidation of the IRBs that was completed in December 2019, we hope to collect IRB data from NIH iRIS. However, because this is a transitional year, we may still need some legacy IRB data from the IC-based IRB datasets, but we are still assessing our data sources. We anticipate that IRB data for these types of assessments will become far easier over time since we have now have a centralized IRB software system and centralized operations.