Conflicts of Interest and Distribution of Resources to Community Partners: An Organizational Ethics Dilemma.

Background: Conflicts of interest can arise when faculty and staff administer programs that distribute research funds, training opportunities, and other resources across academic and community partners. We describe the ethical concerns encountered by a Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) program in administering its community-focused pilot grant program and how its Research Bioethics Consultation service helped to address them.Ethical Concerns: CTSA program faculty and staff identified ethical concerns in several areas, including appropriateness of including Regional Research Collaborations (RRC) faculty as principal or co-investigators on applications, determining how much help RRC faculty and staff should provide to prospective applicants, and creating a fair and effective application review process.

A comparison of institutional review board professionals' and patients' views on consent for research on medical practices.

Background/aims: In the context of research on medical practices, which includes comparative effectiveness research and pragmatic clinical trials, empirical studies have begun to raise questions about the extent to which institutional review boards' interpretations and applications of research regulations align with patients' values. To better understand the similarities and differences between these stakeholder groups, we compare and contrast two surveys: one of institutional review board professionals and one of patients, which examine views on consent for research on medical practices.

Methods: We conducted online surveys of two target populations between July 2014 and March 2015.