Taking it to the Community: Increasing knowledge and skills about human subjects protections and the IRB process for community partners engaged in research

There is an increasing amount of partnerships developing between community and university partners engaged in health research. From these partnerships, research projects develop and funding is procured. Meanwhile, these partnerships face numerous time and educational barriers when required to obtain approval from Institutional Review Boards. We have developed the "Ethical Protections Training for Community Partners Engaged in Research" in order to achieve two interlocking goals. The first goal for this training is to improve the IRB approval process of community-partnered research by providing IRBs assurance that community research partners are capable of adequately protecting human subjects by implementing existing human subjects protections. The second goal is to build community capacity by teaching community partners the history behind the institutional regulations in place to protect research participants, the principles underlying these regulations, and how to apply them to research protections in a community context. The training will also build community partner's capacity to competently consent research participants, increase their sensitivity to situations involving vulnerable and special populations in research, and teach them how to recognize and report adverse events. Hopefully these dual purposes will ultimately facilitate the IRB process for community partners by convincing local IRBs to create a certification for these partners which will give them recognition as being "engaged" in research as a full partner. In order for this training to be fully implemented and supported, it has been piloted with the IRB, community partners engaged in research, and other CTSAs in the area.