The IRB Networking and Education Forum raises the awareness of new regulatory requirements and new demands of bioscience research approaches to foster collaborations between institutions and create a sense of community and trust. The IRB Networking and Education Forum will allow informal discussion among IRB staff, directors, board members, institutional legal counsel, and research directors about common regulatory issues faced, with the hope of lowering barriers to compatible policy and procedures across Arizona's IRBs.

           The Forum also will support targeted support services -- identified by the IRB community in Arizona -- to assist in developing capacity and quality across IRBs in Arizona.

Activities to Date:

• The Fall 2007 IRB Networking and Education forum was sponsored by AZTransNet and featured CITI co-founders Dr. Paul Braunschweiger (University of Miami), and Karen Hansen (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center). The session focused on the Collaborative IRB Training Initiative (CITI) program including:
  • Advancing Integrity in Research and the Role of the CITI Initiative
  • CITI Program Demonstration - CITI Program Overview and Current AZ CITI User Best Practices Discussion
  • AZTransNet and CITI Program Partnership - CITI Program Customized Course Development & Sharing Discussion


• The Spring 2007 networking meeting took place at the end of the Tissue Repository Policy Development Retreat. Forum members are participating in the workgroups to develop policy guidelines on tissue repository forms.



• Held Fall 2006 networking meeting of Forum on October 30, 2006 on the topic of FDA and OHRP investigations and internal audits, and FDA and Arizona experts making presentations. 29 IRB professionals representing over 16 organizations participated in the meeting, with a teleconference hook-up to Flagstaff and Tucson.
  • Click Here to View the 2006 Forum Agenda
  • "IRB Audits," Dr. Rebecca Dahl
  • "OHRP IRB Institutional Audits," Linda Mottle

Ongoing Activities:

• AzTransNet has partnered with the Collaborative IRB Training Initiative (CITI) to offer a comprehensive suite of courses to enable those engaged in performing and overseeing human subjects clinical research with the training required by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
  
  CITI is a proven training tool for high quality, peer reviewed educational resources for those engaged or involved in human subjects research. Over 600 institutions participate in CITI and over 500,000 users have registered for CITI courses. In Arizona, a wide variety of institutions already subscribe to CITI, including St. Joseph's Hospital, TGEN, and the University of Arizona and Arizona State University. Surveys of institution using CITI demonstrate its high value-added with CITI receiving high ratings in its ease of use, acceptance by users, ability to raise the professionalism of IRBs, and overall satisfaction.   Click Here to Learn More About the CITI Program