Ethical and responsible conduct of research

The science of improving lives is built on the ethical and responsible conduct of research. FHI 360 is a leader in building the evidence base for best practices in research ethics.

The Partnering for Care Project, undertaken by FHI 360 and its partners, examined practices at international clinical research sites to develop a manual for building bridges between trial participants and the health care they need.¹
The Lexicon Project, led by FHI 360 through the Preventive Technologies Agreement (PTA), assessed the effectiveness of focus group techniques derived from field linguistics and social science research methods for improving the translation of consent forms in HIV prevention clinical trials.² A lexicon development toolkit will be released.

Community and stakeholder engagement is a critical foundation for advancing ethics in health research, and FHI 360 develops guidance materials to improve work in this area.

The Stakeholder Engagement Toolkit for HIV Prevention Trials is a guide to engaging a wide range of key stakeholders at every stage of a clinical trial, from planning to implementation and sharing results.
The Communications Handbook for Clinical Trials provides practical guidance to clinical trial staff and research partners on how to anticipate and respond to the special communications challenges posed by the conduct of clinical research.

FHI 360 has developed two award-winning ethics training curricula that are used throughout the world.

The Research Ethics Training Curriculum, Second Edition provides guidance to international researchers for applying universal ethical standards in the design and implementation of research involving human participants.
The Research Ethics Training Curriculum for Community Representatives was designed to educate community representatives about their roles and responsibilities, so that they have a stronger voice in the research process. The curricula reflect FHI 360’s commitment to research that is designed and conducted according to the highest ethical standards.

¹ MacQueen KM, McLoughlin K, Alleman P, Burke HM, Mack N. Partnering for care in HIV prevention trials. J Empirical Res Human Res Ethics. 2008 Dec;3(4):5-18

² Mack N, Ramirez C, Friedland B, Nnko S. Lost in translation: Assessing effectiveness of focus group questioning techniques to develop improved translation of terminology used in HIV prevention clinical trials. PLoS ONE. 2013 Sept 12; 8(9):e73799

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Ethical and responsible conduct of research