Jessie Kimbrough-Sugick, MD, MPH, Jessica Holzer, MA, and Eric B. Bass, MD, MPH
Researchers who approach community partners with an agenda already in hand are missing the point of the community-based participatory research enterprise: developing priorities for study together.
By privileging traditional research methods in forms for research protocol approval, IRBs can unknowingly allow community partners to be harmed in CBPR. Changes to the language can help ensure appropriate sensitivity and community involvement.
CBP researchers are challenged to think strategically about ways to convey their accomplishments and educate their non-CBPR peers about the nature of their research, processes not required of traditional researchers.
Patients who use drugs intravenously may be at high risk for relapse, but their situation is no more futile than that of persons with diabetes and coronary artery disease who smoke and frequent all-you-can-eat buffets.
Elizabeth Lee Daugherty, MD, MPH and Douglas B. White, MD, MA
Opportunities to advance scientific knowledge may arise during humanitarian crises, but their presence does not justify suspension of the ethical foundations governing human subjects research.
It is unconstitutional--and unethical--for physicians to participate in evidence-gathering against pregnant women suspected of being addicted to illegal substances without informing them of their constitutional rights or gaining their informed consent.