Institutional Review Board Links
|
Office of the
Institutional Review Board
Los Angeles County Department of Public Health
313 N. Figueroa St., Room 127
Los Angeles, CA 90012
phone: (213) 288-8675
email: irb@ph.lacounty.gov
Olga Coronado
IRB Administrative Deputy
313 N. Figueroa St., Room 127
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Alysia Kwon, ScM
Director and IRB Vice Chair
313 N. Figueroa St., Room 127
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Will Nicholas, PhD, MPH
IRB Chair
313 N. Figueroa St., Room 608
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Paul
Camarena, MPH
IRB Analyst
313 N. Figueroa St., Room 127
Los Angeles, CA 90012
|
I
Adobe Reader
Note: PDF documents on this site were created using Adobe Acrobat 5.0 or later.
If you are using an earlier version of Adobe Acrobat Reader (4.x or less), document functionality may be reduced. Please
Click Here
|
|
|
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health
Institutional Review Board, known simply by its
initials as “the IRB,” comprises an independent
oversight body of health professionals and community
representatives housed within the Office of the
Institutional Review Board in the DPH Chief Science
Office. The IRB committee and the Office of the
Institutional Review Board are together responsible
for assuring that all research, evaluation, and
other data-gathering activities involving DPH staff,
facilities or clients/patients is conducted in
accordance with the highest scientific and ethical
standards and applicable federal and state
regulations (45 CFR 46). The IRB ensures that all
public health research, evaluation and other
data-gathering activities in Los Angeles County
respect the right of subjects, also known as
participants, to freely decide on the basis of
complete and accurate information whether or not to
participate, to have their information kept private
and confidential, to participate only in research
devoted to answering significant questions with
sound scientific methods and to have any risks of
research kept to a minimum and balanced or
outweighed by potential benefits to the participants
and/or society.
The Public Health IRB is part of a national system
of IRBs (sometimes called “research ethics
committees” or “human subjects protection programs”)
required by the federal government for any
institution or agency that receives federal funds
for biomedical, public health or social scientific
research. The basic requirements and standards for
IRBs are established in the Code of Federal
Regulations and are overseen and sometimes audited
by three federal offices, but each local IRB
functions independently to apply the federal minimum
standards to its particular local context, often
with additional state or county requirements. The
Public Health IRB was established by action of the
L.A. County Board of Supervisors in 1999. We
currently oversee not only all research related in
any way to the Department of Public Health but also
research conducted by Department of Health Services
headquarters staff, certain other County departments
and, by specific agreements, some private non-profit
community-based agencies.
The core IRB function is requiring and then
approving applications from researchers, research
teams and/or the responsible DPH staff liaison (for
outside and multi-agency collaborations) for any
data collection activity. The forms, instructions,
links and other information presented on this
website lay out the components and process of
submitting an application.
Not surprisingly, many applications are not approved
unconditionally on their first try. They may be
approved with stipulations that certain aspects of
the project must be changed or clarified, or the
application may be sent back for substantial
rethinking and revision. This should not be
considered a disaster, however, as nearly every
application is eventually approved!
Still, the IRB hopes to improve not only the quality
of individual applications but also the overall
awareness and richness of ethical and related
community involvement standards in public health
research as well as a continually rising level of
knowledge among DPH staff of research design,
methods and best practices. Therefore, the IRB
supports its core function through an active
outreach, education, consultation and training
program. We periodically offer open workshops as
well as specialized training programs for individual
departments or programs.
|
|
|
The Institutional Review Board serves all LA County Department of Public Health (DPH) facilities, staff, patients, clients, and databases,
even if other agencies or individuals have primary responsibility.
The IRB also serves projects from the headquarters units and the
Ambulatory Care Network of the LA County Department of Health
Services. Some DHS-related projects must be reviewed by IRBs at the
various County medical centers. Finally, the IRB serves several
community partner organizations via memoranda of agreement.
Check
with the IRB about coverage for a particular proposed project if you
are in doubt.
|
What projects does the IRB review?
|
The IRB reviews any DPH-related research project that involves the collection or analysis of data from or about human subjects.
Research projects may include…
Clinical trials
Focus groups
Data abstraction from medical records
Surveys
Though IRB procedures allow exemption for some data collection projects that are classified as program evaluation routine public health activity rather than research, the IRB must make the determination that a project is exempt. An abbreviated application for exemption is necessary, as explained in the forms located elsewhere on this web page.
|
We encourage you to attend our training workshops on submitting an application to the Institutional Review Board. Contact our office for a list of upcoming training dates.
|
|