The purpose of our grant was to develop short courses in ethics issues that arise when conducting health research in developing countries. In our first year, we developed the curriculum and cases for our first short course. The first course was held in June 1999; it was an intensive, one-week course held during the Summer Epidemiology Institute of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Twenty-two students/professionals were enrolled, from seven different countries. The course ran from 1:30-5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday for one week. The daily format was to begin with 1-2 hours of lecture or panel presentation and then finish with 1-2 hours of small group case discussion. The five topics covered in the five days were: 1. Introduction to principles and regulations; 2. Informed Consent; 3. HIV vaccines; 4. Justice and what is owed to research participants; 5. Intersection of study design and ethics. Faculty included lecturers from three developing countries. All cases used in the course were developed from real cases in the field. Year 2 has been spent developing a longer version of the course, to be offered during our fourth term of our regular academic calendar (9 weeks in duration). Two developing country researchers and one developing country community representative will guest lecture in the course, which will expand on the topics covered in the earlier course. We have spent a great deal of time in Year 2 developing cases, and now have twenty available to use for class discussion and/or assignments. Our """"""""longer"""""""" course will be offered from March 27-May 16, 2000. This, too, will be split between lecture/panel presentation and case discussion. Assignments include serving on a mock IRB, drafting a consent form and process, debating an ethics issue in a particular case, and doing either a longer research paper or case analyses. In addition, in Year 2, through another grant, we are offering a short ethics course in Malawi, Africa. While in Malawi (mid-March 2000) we will interview research participants and/or representatives to help provide context for the teaching and to create additional cases. One of our staff, on an earlier trip in Year 2, also went to Malawi to interview ethics review board members, representatives from the College of Medicine, and research staff to gather material for case development. The plan for Year 3 is to continue teaching our other courses but also to develop a distance education version of the course. We have begun meeting with the technical experts who are advising us how to adapt the course for distance format. In addition, when guest lecturers from out of town participate in our course in Year 2, we will ask them to give their lecture a second time in the taping studio to begin preparing for the distance course.
