UB Earns Top Accreditation for Human Research Protection

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo has earned full accreditation from the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP), a highly prestigious, national organization that assures the ethics of research on human subjects.

The distinction, which took effect on Sept. 10, puts UB into an elite cadre of universities that includes Duke, Harvard, Stanford, Penn State and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

"With this accreditation, UB has achieved the 'gold seal of approval' for our Human Research Protection Program and the institutional review boards (IRBs) involved in the review of all of the university's 1,700 research protocols," said Jorge V. José, Dr. Sci., UB vice president for research. "It means that an objective third party has evaluated UB's program and said that it exceeds federal regulations and meets best-practices criteria."

"The University at Buffalo can be proud of its commitment to protecting participants and to being a leader among its peer institutions in earning accreditation," said Marjorie A. Speers, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of AAHRPP.

According to AAHRPP, accreditation indicates that an institution has provided tangible evidence of its commitment to scientifically and ethically sound research and continuous improvement in policies, procedures and practices concerning human research subjects.

In attaining the nation's highest level of accreditation for human research, UB makes itself more attractive to research funding organizations, from federal agencies to the private sector, José said.

"By attracting more funding and through the higher profile that accreditation provides, UB will be better able to reach its goals of generating a thriving, knowledge-based economy in Buffalo and Western New York," he said.

Research expenditures across the disciplines at UB increased by nearly 7.7 percent to a record $348.2 million in the 2008 fiscal year, according to the National Science Foundation.

While AAHRPP accreditation is entirely voluntary, it is becoming increasingly desirable; so far, at least one major pharmaceutical corporation requires that its subcontractors be accredited and other companies are likely to follow. Federal funding agencies including the National Institutes of Health also are said to be considering the possibility of making AAHRPP accreditation a prerequisite for receiving grants.

"The decision to target AAHRPP accreditation was the result of UB's forward-looking vision as expressed in the UB 2020 planning process," José said. "We took a strategic look at where we wanted to be in the future and we committed the necessary resources. We did it because we felt this was the right thing for the institution."

UB also decided to undertake this task using its own resources without the assistance of outside consultants, a path that many other institutions have taken.

"Our staff and faculty at UB worked on this over and above their regular duties," José said.

The process of accreditation for UB took three-and-a-half years, during which time dozens of meetings took place. The result was a 678-page application demonstrating how UB would meet each of AAHRPP's 77 performance standards; it was submitted in 2008.

An intensive, three-day site visit followed in May, in which AAHRPP site visitors from peer institutions met with 80 UB administrators, including UB President John B. Simpson and Provost Satish K. Tripathi, IRB members, and research faculty and research staff, who conduct research with human subjects.

The university was notified this month that it had been approved for full accreditation status by the AAHRPP Council on Accreditation following the Council's review.

"Accreditation strengthens the research enterprise across the university so that everyone is meeting the same standard," said Jose.

UB's accreditation is noteworthy, he added, because the university is a complex institution. Unlike hospitals and smaller institutions of higher education, UB's protocols are evenly split between clinical research in children and adults and social science research; that breadth meant that applying for accreditation would require a comprehensive review of policies and procedures on a university-wide basis.

UB also was recently reaccredited by AAALAC, the Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International, for protection of animals used in its research.

Only 42 institutions in the U.S. have received both AAHRPP and AAALAC accreditations.

José added that the accreditation does not require any significant changes by faculty conducting research with human subjects.

According to the Office of the Vice President for Research, UB's AAHRPP accreditation was the result of the work of the AAHRPP accreditation team led by Edward Zablocki, UB's research subjects protection administrator; Darlene Campanella, senior administrator for the Health Sciences IRB; Deborah Licata and Beth Griffiths, past and present administrators for the Children and Youth IRB; Christian Marks, administrator for the Social and Behavioral Sciences IRB; Cheryl Sanchez, junior administrator for the Health Sciences IRB; Dorothy Wright, quality assurance/quality improvement administrator for human research subjects protection; with input from Children and Youth IRB co-chairs Michael Cimino and J. Michel Roland; Health Sciences IRB Chair Monica Spaulding and Social and Behavioral Sciences IRB Chair Joel Raynor, and the assistance of graduate assistants Krishna Sarbadhikari, Rachel LaTouche, Amanda Ayler and Lauren Peterson.

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system and its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB's more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.