Meeting

Developing the Clinical Investigator Workforce

When:

Tuesday, June 27, 2000 - Wednesday, June 28, 2000 (10:45 AM)

Topic(s):

Biomedical and Health Research, Public Health

Activity:

Clinical Research Roundtable

Board(s):

Board on Health Sciences Policy

The Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Clinical Research Roundtable (CRR) held its initial meeting on June 27-28, 2000, at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C. The group, chaired by Dr. William Gerberding, President Emeritus of the University of Washington, consisted of individuals from the academic health community, federal agencies sponsoring and regulating clinical research, private-sector sponsors of clinical research, foundations, public-sector and private-sector insurance programs, health plans and insurance companies, corporate purchasers of health care, and representatives of patient interests. The roundtable met quarterly (until 2005) to discuss the challenges facing clinical research and ways to create a more supportive environment for the conduct of a broad agenda of high-quality clinical research. The roundtable provided a forum for discussion's about approaches to resolving both acute and long-term issues affecting clinical research and  sponsored workshops on these issues. The roundtable enhanced mutual understanding of clinical research within the scientific community and the general public, and aimed to increase public participation in clinical studies. The charge to the group from IOM also called on the CRR to be attentive to the ethical underpinnings of clinical research as it considered a broad range of workforce and infrastructure-related issues that span the full spectrum of clinical research.

The June meeting was primarily organizational in nature, as the 28 members learned about each other's backgrounds and experiences and explored their interests and priorities for future work by the CRR. IOM President Kenneth Shine set the stage for much of the meeting by pointing out that the Roundtable is both a fact-finding activity and a dissemination activity, and that it faced two big challenges in proceeding on its important mission. The first of those stems from the fact that, unlike typical IOM committees formed to answer very specific questions, roundtables are formed to gather together major stakeholders in a field, in this case the clinical research enterprise. He reinforced the need for the participants to put aside parochial biases or subordinate them to the public good. The second challenge, according to Dr. Shine, is to focus attention on two to four main topics out of the plethora of issues identified by previous groups assembled by IOM and others. He advised the CRR to identify some important messages and the audiences that need to hear them before deciding on the nature of its products.