Plenary V: Progress in Defining and Evaluating HRPP/IRB Quality and Effectiveness

The Consortium to Advance Effective Research Ethics Oversight (AEREO) was founded in 2018 with a mission to articulate what it means for IRBs/HRPPs to "work," identify meaningful measures of IRB/HRPP quality and effectiveness, evaluate how well IRB/HRPPs are working now, and pursue evidence-based ways to help them work better. This panel will open with a description of AEREO's goals, progress made to date, plans for the future, and an invitation to join the Consortium's work. It will then take a deeper look at several key projects: (1) identifying barriers to empirical research with IRBs/HRPPs and outlining possible solutions to encourage participation and engagement; (2) describing the results of interviews with HRPP/IRB stakeholders, directors, and accredited organizations about how to define and evaluate quality and effectiveness, and the identified need to focus on participant protection outcomes and develop a standard for IRB reasonableness; and (3) understanding investigator perspectives on the ways that HRPPs/IRBs add value to the research enterprise, to promote further attention to these areas as possible measures of quality and effectiveness.