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How do community advisory boards fulfil their ethical role in HIV clinical trials? A protocol for a systematic review of qualitative evidence.

ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION:Community advisory boards (CABs) continue to gain wide use and acceptance in global health research including in HIV clinical trials. They provide means through which community concerns regarding the trial can be considered by the research team, and provide an important platform of communication between the researchers and the community about study goals. Therefore, this systematic review protocol will guide the review of qualitative evidence on the ethical roles of CABs in HIV clinical trials based on the three fundamental ethical principles: respect for the person, beneficence and justice. METHODS AND ANALYSIS:This systematic review of qualitative evidence will involve searching four medical databases: PubMed, ScienceDirect, CINAHL and Cochrane Library. Additionally, other relevant evidence will be obtained through hand searching and grey literature. Searches will be limited to studies published in the English language from 1989 (the year that CABs were first established in HIV clinical trials) to 2019. Articles searched will be screened by two independent authors based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Included articles will be appraised for quality using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme checklist and followed by qualitative data extraction. Findings will be analysed based on the meta-aggregative approach with the aid of EPPI-Reviewer 4 web-based software. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION:Ethical approval does not apply to this review. Data will be disseminated through scientific conferences and peer-reviewed journals to inform policies and stake-holders about the ethical role of CABs. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER:CRD42019133787.

SUBMITTER: Pancras G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7213848 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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How do community advisory boards fulfil their ethical role in HIV clinical trials? A protocol for a systematic review of qualitative evidence.

Pancras Godwin G Amour Maryam M Mwakyandile Tosi T Morris Baraka B Sunguya Bruno F BF Mmbaga Blandina B

BMJ open 20200430 4

<h4>Introduction</h4>Community advisory boards (CABs) continue to gain wide use and acceptance in global health research including in HIV clinical trials. They provide means through which community concerns regarding the trial can be considered by the research team, and provide an important platform of communication between the researchers and the community about study goals. Therefore, this systematic review protocol will guide the review of qualitative evidence on the ethical roles of CABs in ...[more]

PMID: 32354781

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Project description:National and international codes of research conduct have been established in most industrialized nations to ensure greater adherence to ethical research practices. Despite these safeguards, however, traditional research approaches often continue to stigmatize marginalized and vulnerable communities. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has evolved as an effective new research paradigm that attempts to make research a more inclusive and democratic process by fostering the development of partnerships between communities and academics to address community-relevant research priorities. As such, it attempts to redress ethical concerns that have emerged out of more traditional paradigms. Nevertheless, new and emerging ethical dilemmas are commonly associated with CBPR and are rarely addressed in traditional ethical reviews. We conducted a content analysis of forms and guidelines commonly used by institutional review boards (IRBs) in the USA and research ethics boards (REBs) in Canada. Our intent was to see if the forms used by boards reflected common CBPR experience. We drew our sample from affiliated members of the US-based Association of Schools of Public Health and from Canadian universities that offered graduate public health training. This convenience sample (n = 30) was garnered from programs where application forms were available online for download between July and August, 2004. Results show that ethical review forms and guidelines overwhelmingly operate within a biomedical framework that rarely takes into account common CBPR experience. They are primarily focused on the principle of assessing risk to individuals and not to communities and continue to perpetuate the notion that the domain of "knowledge production" is the sole right of academic researchers. Consequently, IRBs and REBs may be unintentionally placing communities at risk by continuing to use procedures inappropriate or unsuitable for CBPR. IRB/REB procedures require a new framework more suitable for CBPR, and we propose alternative questions and procedures that may be utilized when assessing the ethical appropriateness of CBPR.

Project description:BackgroundSouth Africa is a major hub of HIV prevention trials, with plans for a licensure trial to start in 2015. The appropriate standards of care and of prevention in HIV vaccine trials are complex and debated issues and ethical guidelines offer some direction. However, there has been limited empirical exploration of South African stakeholders' perspectives on ethical guidance related to prevention and care in HIV vaccine trials.MethodsSite staff, Community Advisory Board members and Research Ethics Committee members involved with current HIV vaccine trials in South Africa were invited to participate in an exploration of their views. A questionnaire listed 10 care and 10 prevention recommendations drawn from two widely available sets of ethical guidelines for biomedical HIV prevention trials. Respondents (n = 98) rated each recommendation on five dimensions: "Familiarity with", "Ease of Understanding", "Ease of Implementing", "Perceived Protection", and "Agreement with" each ethical recommendation. The ratings were used to describe stakeholder perspectives on dimensions for each recommendation. Dimension ratings were averaged across the five dimensions and used as an indication of overall merit for each recommendation. Differences were explored across dimensions, between care-oriented and prevention-oriented recommendations, and between stakeholder groups.ResultsBoth care and prevention recommendations were rated highly overall, with median ratings well above the scale midpoint. In general, informed consent recommendations were most positively rated. Care-related recommendations were rated significantly more positively than prevention-related recommendations, with the five lowest-rated recommendations being prevention-related. The most problematic dimension across all recommendations was "Ease of Implementing," and the least problematic was "Agreement with," suggesting the most pressing stakeholder concerns are practical rather than theoretical; that is, respondents agree with but see barriers to the attainment of these recommendations.ConclusionsWe propose that prevention recommendations be prioritized for refinement, especially those assigned bottom-ranking scores for "Ease of Implementing", and/ or "Ease of Understanding" in order to assist vaccine stakeholders to better comprehend and implement these recommendations. Further qualitative research could also assist to better understand nuances in stakeholder reservations about implementing such recommendations.

Dataset Information

How do community advisory boards fulfil their ethical role in HIV clinical trials? A protocol for a systematic review of qualitative evidence.

Publications

How do community advisory boards fulfil their ethical role in HIV clinical trials? A protocol for a systematic review of qualitative evidence.

Similar Datasets

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