Work with your IRB Posted on February 28, 2006 John Landsverk (bio) sees value in working closely with your IRB.

You've got to get to know your IRB staff and the materials they're working with for discussion of complex study issues. Be able to call them up and say, "I've got this problem, and I don't know how to handle it. What should I be thinking about here?" They are experts on it, so you want to work with your IRB.

I also believe that it's becoming much more common, and I think a good thing, to locate a university-based ethicist who really is an expert in these issues, but they need experience in research studies involving kids. Kid studies are much more complex from a human subjects point of view because they involve both parent and child, and they involve all kinds of complex developmental issues.

Understand that the preparation of the IRB application is necessary. It is a time-consuming process, but you need to really work that through. What you want to do is when you review NIH and IRB applications from successful examples related to your work, go into them and see how they're handling it. I always learn from that.

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