How to find non- affiliated IRB members
Try volunteer, retiree organizations
IRBs continually struggle to find nonaffiliated and nonscientist volunteers to fill the challenging role of IRB member.
While many IRBs ask attorneys, clergy, and community organization leaders to fill this role, there are some ways to recruit nonaffiliated members who represent more diverse demographics.
For instance, one research compliance official recruited mothers of young children by asking for help from a local Junior League.
"I thought of places that might otherwise have people who volunteer for them, and the Junior League came to mind," says Kara Brocious, MPH, CIP, research compliance consultant, human subjects office, Indiana University in Indianapolis.
"The Junior League does philanthropic and other activities, so I thought if we reached out to their membership there might be people who were interested," she says. "It worked. We had three or four responses from people who were interested, and we still have one of them as a board member several years later."
Organizations for retired people also are good resources for recruits, says Laura Noll, MS-candidate, LAT, ILAM, research compliance manager at Radford University in Radford, VA.
Noll recruits members for both an IRB and an institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC), and she recalls the time when an IACUC was in danger of being closed because of the loss of two community members.
"We sent out a Hail Mary, asking for help in trying to find us someone, and one member asked a minister, who came on board," she says. "Another person found a retired computer executive and he came on board, too."
After that experience, Noll learned of the national Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP). She contacted the RSVP director, who helped find volunteers for the ethics boards.
Finding ethics board non-affiliated members in Radford is particularly challenging because the university is near Virginia Tech, and the two universities are the area’s biggest employers.
"Most people who live here work at the university or have a spouse who works there or have kids who graduated from there," she says.
Brocious found that recruiting women volunteers through Junior League provided additional benefits to the IRB because of the new members’ ability to offer a different perspective on informed consent and research proposals.
"They’re younger people with young children," she says. "One woman we recruited had a pharmacist background, but she wasn’t working as a pharmacist anymore."
The community volunteers worked out well for the Indiana University IRB, providing at least one nonaffiliated member who stayed on the board for about three years, Brocious says.
"I would go back to the Junior League or an arts organization for non-affiliated members," she says. "And I would look for volunteers from a local professional organization that has younger, educated members who offer their expertise to nonprofit groups."
Brocious and Noll offer these tips on how to recruit non-affiliated members:
• Stress the community altruism aspect. Noll tells new board members that their participation on the board is a service to the university and their community.
"It helps us fulfil federal regulations," she adds. "But I also explain the spirit of the regulations and how we want the community involved so there is a non-scientist, non-affiliated perspective on the research."
• Talk about how interesting it can be to discuss research. The Junior League recruits found IRB work very interesting, and they were enthusiastic about attending board meetings and looking at research proposal materials, Brocious says.
"These all were educated people and could follow along well with scientific concerns," she says.
• Promote their role in representing research participants. The Indiana University board’s members include a physician, a pharmacist, a biostatistician, and others with research backgrounds, Brocious says.
So when she recruited young women volunteers who were not actively working in their professions while staying at home with their children, she found that they helped to diversify the IRB. The young mothers on the IRB liked having a sense that they were representative of research participants, Brocious says.
"In IRB discussions they look at it from the point of view of someone being asked to enroll in the study, wondering how they would receive information about the study and whether it would make sense," she says.
• Be upfront about the time commitment. Noll describes the board’s time commitment and meeting schedule, but also describes how interesting the studies can be.
In recruiting new board members, some of the regulations and confidentiality issues should be emphasized, as well.
"I explain that a lot of what we review is proprietary, so it needs to be kept confidential," Noll says.
