Institutional Conflicts of Interest

Recently, a number of media reports have focused attention on conflict of interest issues in the research arena. Although most research institutions have conflicts of interest policies in place for investigators, fewer have adopted concrete policies pertaining to institutional conflicts of interest. In a recent report, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) addressed this particular issue. The AAMC Task Force on Financial Conflicts of Interest in Clinical Research report, entitled Protecting Subjects, Preserving Trust, Promoting Progress II: Principles and Recommendations for Oversight of an Institution's Financial Interests in Human Subjects Research, is a revision of the AAMC's 1990 guidelines. The federal government's Office of Research Integrity (ORI) describes the content of the report in the ORI September 2003 newsletter (Volume 11, No. 4):

Read the full ORI September 2003 Newsletter

Note: A Columbia University committee is in the process of drafting a new "Institutional Conflict of Interest Policy with Regard to Research Activities".

[Excerpted from the ORI September 2003 Newsletter]

Principles and recommended processes for addressing competing fiduciary responsibility and ethical obligations facing institutions that conduct human subjects research are outlined in the second report prepared by the Association of American Medical Colleges on conflicts of interest.

The report, Protecting Subjects, Preserving Trust, Promoting Progress II: Principles and Recommendations for Oversight of an Institution's Financial Interests in Human Subjects Research, is a companion to Protecting Subjects, Preserving Trust, Promoting Progress: Policy and Guidelines for the Oversight of Individual Financial Interests in Human Subjects Research. Both reports are available at http://www.aamc.org/members/coitf.

"An institution may have a conflict of interest in human subjects research whenever the financial interest of the institution, or of an institutional official acting within his or her authority on behalf of the institution, might affect-or reasonably appear to affect-institutional processes for the conduct, review, or oversight of human subjects research," the report states.