For the second time in less than a year, Bruce Gordon, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics and co-chairman of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at UNMC, has been appointed to a prestigious, new national committee.
The United States Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Office of Human Research Protections recently announced Dr. Gordon’s appointment to the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP) Subpart A Subcommittee.
SACHRP provides advice to the HHS secretary on issues involving research involving human subjects. Subpart A is the backbone of Title 45, Part 46 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which are the HHS regulations governing the protection of human subjects. As part of the subcommittee, Dr. Gordon and 12 others will offer advice on how the regulations should be interpreted, or whether they need to be modified. The regulations, he said, are based on “strong ethical principles,” but were last revised in 1981, and mainly pertain to biomedical research. As a result, they do not translate clearly to today’s multi-center, large clinical trials or to social science research in areas such as history and journalism.
“I am delighted that Dr. Gordon will be serving on SACHRP’s Subpart A Subcommittee,” said Ernest Prentice, Ph.D., chairman of the SACHRP and associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at UNMC. “This is a very important subcommittee and the fact that Dr. Gordon was selected is a credit to Dr. Gordon and UNMC. It’s very prestigious to have two individuals from UNMC serving at the national level.”
The new committee, one of three SACHRP subcommittees, will hold its first meeting in late February or early March. The other SACHRP subcommittees are looking at research involving children and prisoners.
“The appointment is obviously flattering to me, but it’s tremendously important to UNMC to have people on and running these major committees,” Dr. Gordon said. “It is yet another recognition that UNMC is on the cutting-edge of research ethics and human research subject protection.”
In July, Dr. Gordon was named chairman of the National Cancer Institute’s newly constituted Pediatric Central Institutional Review Board (PedCIRB).
A pediatric hematologist-oncologist, Dr. Gordon joined UNMC in July 1989. He became a member of the IRB in 1992 and has served as its chairman for seven years. He is a member of the Public Policy Committee of the Applied Research Ethics National Association (the organization of IRB professionals), an editor of the Collaborative IRB Training Initiative (CITI) and author of two modules for the course. He has served as clinical director of the Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplantation Program at UNMC. Dr. Gordon received his undergraduate and medical degrees from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.
Dr. Gordon expects to learn a great deal from the SACHRP appointment. “The people on the committee are the best in the game,” he said. “I know many of them, but seeing them together, thinking together, working together will be tremendously fascinating. I’m honored to be included.”