This project will facilitate four separate activities with a goal of improving the mechanisms for protecting human participants in FHI research projects. The first two activities are linked activities to implement FHI's Research Ethics Training Curriculum at FHI's African and Asian Regional Offices. The first of the two linked activities is training in human research ethics using the curriculum as the main instructional tool. Up to 30 participants in each region will participate in this training activity. The second acitivity at the Regional Offices is a Training of Trainers session. At each regional session up to 20 participants will be trained to implement the Research Ethics Training Curriculum at research performance sites. Both of these activities will be conducted by staff from FHI's Office of International Research Ethics and the Field, Information and Training Services unit. This project will also support the translation of the Research Ethics Curriculum into Chinese. The Chinese version of the curriculum will be used to train collaborating investigators in China in human research ethics. The Chinese language curriculum will be available on CD-ROM and via the internet at FHI's webpage, www.fhi.org. In addition, this project will enhance the capabilities of FHI's IRB by providing new project management software for use by IRB staff at FHI's North Carolina headquarters. The upgraded software will allow for better tracking of research projects that are subject to review by the IRB. It will further streamline the acitivities of the IRB staff by standardizing reports that are generated for IRB members and research staff at FHI.
