Advancing Justice and Equity in Pragmatic Clinical Trials

Headshot of Joe AliVA HSR&D Cyberseminars: Spotlight on Pain Management
“Advancing Justice and Equity in Pragmatic Clinical Trials”
Joe Ali, PhD
Johns Hopkins University

Advance registration required.

“Pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs) can help bring evidence‐based therapies to people living with pain and co‐occurring conditions, with an emphasis on developing insights that are relevant to patients, practitioners and others. However, in order to reach their potential within a diverse society, pain PCTs must thoughtfully consider how patient vulnerabilities and experiences of injustice and inequity might affect trial design and implementation. Drawing from the experiences and insights of the NIH‐DOD‐VA Pain Management Collaboratory, this seminar will situate the concepts of justice and equity within a pain PCT context, identifying challenges and offering strategies to potentially enhance the value of such trials for various key populations.”

Joe Ali is an associate professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the associate director for global programs at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. He is a member of the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory’s Ethics and Regulatory Core.

December 20, 2021: NIH Supplemental Funding Available for Bioethics Capacity Building

NIH logoThe NIH announced the availability of an administrative supplement to fund research on ethical considerations related to biomedical research and projects that support capacity building in bioethics.

Over the past 3 years, the NIH Office of the Director has partnered with NIH Institutes and Centers to support projects spanning the wide range of intersections between bioethics and biomedical research. The new funding opportunity applies to both basic and clinical research and supports a variety of research projects, from ethical considerations in emerging technologies to developing capacity to further engage research participants as partners in research. Applications will be accepted until March 17, 2022.

View the official notice.

July 3, 2019: New Article Describes the Public’s Beliefs Regarding Responsibility to Participate in Research

Findings from a new article suggest that the majority of patients do not feel a personal responsibility to participate in clinical research. In the article, Kevin Weinfurt, Li Lin, and Jeremy Sugarman report the results of a national survey of nearly 3000 people regarding their attitudes towards research responsibilities as well as their trust in doctors, healthcare systems, and medical research. Ethical frameworks for learning health systems have suggested that patients have a responsibility to contribute to learning activities, including research. The findings from this survey suggest that most patients in the U.S. do not currently endorse such a responsibility.

“These data provide a useful snapshot of the public’s views toward the obligation to participate in research. It is unclear how, if at all, these views will shift with increased efforts to create mature learning health systems. And if such views do not shift, it is uncertain what that would mean for the success of learning health systems.” —Kevin Weinfurt, PhD

Read the full article: Public Views Regarding the Responsibility of Patients, Clinicians, and Institutions to Participate in Research in the U.S.

For more on alternate approaches to consent, see the Living Textbook Chapter on Consent, Disclosure, and Non-Disclosure

March 15, 2018: New Resource for Understanding Ethical and Regulatory Architecture of Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Data

Using patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) data requires balancing the need for sufficient private health information to support meaningful research with the need to protect patient privacy and autonomy. In support of this dual goal, The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has just released a document that provides a collection of tools and resources aimed at helping a broad audience of stakeholders understand the ethical and regulatory requirements related to collecting, using, sharing, and disclosing PCOR data.

“An architecture is necessary to ensure patient privacy is protected and health information is appropriately secured during collection, access, use, and disclosure as required by law, regulation, and/or policy.” —Legal and Ethical Architecture for PCOR Data

PCOR data will help expand the evidence base for therapies and improve health outcomes for individual patients.

Read the full document: Legal and Ethical Architecture for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) Data (“Architecture”)

The document is divided into 5 chapters:

Chapter 1: Overview of Legal and Ethical Architecture for PCOR Data provides background for the project and an overview of key ethical and regulatory requirements.

Chapter 2: Legal and Ethical Significance of Data for PCOR describes fundamental concepts for organizing data into categories such that legal and ethical frameworks can be applied. The chapter includes key considerations and types of data relevant to PCOR, such as clinical, administrative, patient-generated, etc.

Chapter 3: Linking Legal and Ethical Requirements to PCOR Data organizes the relevant legal provisions according to the key data considerations outlined in Chapter 2: identifiability, subject, source, access and use/purpose, consent/authorization, security, and legal status.

Chapter 4: Framework for Navigating Legal and Ethical Requirements for PCOR is designed as a decision tool that builds on the key data considerations described in Chapters 2 and 3. The goal of this chapter is to help researchers determine whether laws apply to particular data and if so, what requirements to attach to their collection and use.

Chapter 5: Mapping Research Flows to Legal Requirements identifies 6 hypothetical use cases, identifies decision trigger points, and maps representative data flows to the relevant legal requirements.

 

Collaboratory Investigators Publish Article on Ethical and Regulatory Complexities for Pragmatic Clinical Trials in JAMA


“Ethics and Regulatory Complexities for Pragmatic Clinical Trials,” a Viewpoint article by Jeremy Sugarman, MD, MPH, MA, and Robert Califf, MD, was published online in JAMA today. In the article, the authors draw on early experiences from two large networks conducting pragmatic clinical trials, the NIH Collaboratory and the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet), to describe 10 ethical and regulatory complexities facing this new field of research. Topics covered include informed consent, risk determination, the role of gatekeepers, and institutional review board review and oversight, among others, as well as the ongoing need for further discussion and research as a key part of efforts aimed at creating a learning healthcare system.

Dr. Sugarman is chair of the Regulatory/Ethics Core of the NIH Collaboratory and deputy director for medicine of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Dr. Califf is the principal investigator of the NIH Collaboratory Coordinating Center and director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute.