Browsing by Author "Sharp, Richard R."

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    An ethics framework for consolidating and prioritizing COVID-19 clinical trials
    (Sage, 2021) Meyer, Michelle N.; Gelinas, Luke; Bierer, Barbara E.; Chandros Hull, Sara; Joffe, Steven; Magnus, David; Mohapatra, Seema; Sharp, Richard R.; Spector-Bagdady, Kayte; Sugarman, Jeremy; Wilfond, Benjamin S.; Fernandez Lynch, Holly; Robert H. McKinney School of Law
    Given the dearth of established safe and effective interventions to respond to COVID-19, there is an urgent ethical imperative to conduct meaningful clinical research. The good news is that interventions to be tested are not in short supply. Unfortunately, the human and material resources needed to conduct these trials are finite. It is essential that trials be robust and meet enrollment targets and that lower-quality studies not be permitted to displace higher-quality studies, delaying answers to critical questions. Yet, with few exceptions, existing research review bodies and processes are not designed to ensure these conditions are satisfied. To meet this challenge, we offer guidance for research institutions about how to ethically consolidate and prioritize COVID-19 clinical trials, while recognizing that consolidation and prioritization should also take place upstream (among manufacturers and funders) and at a higher level (e.g., nationally). In our proposed three-stage process, trials must first meet threshold criteria. Those that do are evaluated in a second stage to determine whether the institution has sufficient capacity to support all proposed trials. If it does not, the third stage entails evaluating studies against two additional sets of comparative prioritization criteria: those specific to the study and those that aim to advance diversification of an institution’s research portfolio. To implement these criteria fairly, we propose that research institutions form COVID-19 research prioritization committees. We briefly discuss some important attributes of these committees, drawing on the authors’ experiences at our respective institutions. Although we focus on clinical trials of COVID-19 therapeutics, our guidance should prove useful for other kinds of COVID-19 research, as well as non-pandemic research, which can raise similar challenges due to the scarcity of research resources.
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    Building a Central Repository for Research Ethics Consultation Data: A Proposal for a Standard Data Collection Tool
    (ACTS, 2015-08-01) Cho, Mildred K.; Taylor, Holly; McCormick, Jennifer B.; Anderson, Nick; Barnard, David; Boyle, Mary B.; Capron, Alexander M.; Dorfman, Elizabeth; Havard, Kathryn; Reider, Carson; Sadler, John; Schwartz, Peter H.; Sharp, Richard R.; Danis, Marion; Wilfond, Benjamin S.; Department of Philosophy, IU School of Liberal Arts
    Clinical research ethics consultation services have been established across academic health centers over the past decade. This paper presents the results of collaboration within the CTSA consortium to develop a standard approach to the collection of research ethics consultation information to serve as a foundation for quality improvement, education, and research efforts. This approach includes categorizing and documenting descriptive information about the requestor, research project, the ethical question, the consult process, and describing the basic structure for a consult note. This paper also explores challenges in determining how to share some of this information between collaborating institutions related to concerns about confidentially, data quality, and informatics. While there is much still to be learned to improve the process of clinical research ethics consultation, these tools can advance these efforts, which, in turn, can facilitate the ethical conduct of research.
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    Understanding the Return of Genomic Sequencing Results Process: Content Review of Participant Summary Letters in the eMERGE Research Network
    (MDPI, 2020-05-13) Lynch, John A.; Sharp, Richard R.; Aufox, Sharon A.; Bland, Sarah T.; Blout, Carrie; Bowen, Deborah J.; Buchanan, Adam H.; Halverson, Colin; Harr, Margaret; Hebbring, Scott J.; Henrikson, Nora; Hoell, Christin; Holm, Ingrid A.; Jarvik, Gail; Kullo, Iftikhar J.; Kochan, David C.; Larson, Eric B.; Lazzeri, Amanda; Leppig, Kathleen A.; Madden, Jill; Marasa, Maddalena; Myers, Melanie F.; Peterson, Josh; Prows, Cynthia A.; Kulchak Rahm, Alanna; Ralston, James; Milo Rasouly, Hila; Scrol, Aaron; Smith, Maureen E.; Sturm, Amy; Stuttgen, Kelsey; Wiesner, Georgia; Williams, Marc S.; Wynn, Julia; Williams, Janet L.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    A challenge in returning genomic test results to research participants is how best to communicate complex and clinically nuanced findings to participants in a manner that is scalable to the large numbers of participants enrolled. The purpose of this study was to examine the features of genetic results letters produced at each Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE3) Network site to assess their readability and content. Letters were collected from each site, and a qualitative analysis of letter content and a quantitative analysis of readability statistics were performed. Because letters were produced independently at each eMERGE site, significant heterogeneity in readability and content was found. The content of letters varied widely from a baseline of notifying participants that results existed to more detailed information about positive or negative results, as well as materials for sharing with family members. Most letters were significantly above the Centers for Disease Control-suggested reading level for health communication. While continued effort should be applied to make letters easier to understand, the ongoing challenge of explaining complex genomic information, the implications of negative test results, and the uncertainty that comes with some types of test and result makes simplifying letter text challenging.