Motivations and perceptions of community advisory boards in the ethics of medical research: the case of the Thai-Myanmar border

BMC Medical Ethics

Research Article

Phaik Kin Cheah¹  Nicholas J White²  Nicholas P J Day³  Khin Maung Lwin⁴  Francois Nosten⁵  Phaik Yeong Cheah⁶  Michael Parker⁷ 

[1] Faculty of Arts and Social Science, Universiti Tunku Adbul Rahman, Kampar, Malaysia;Mahidol Oxford Research Unit, Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, 10400, Bangkok, Thailand;Centre for Tropical Medicine, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, OX3 7LJ, Oxford, UK;Mahidol Oxford Research Unit, Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, 10400, Bangkok, Thailand;Centre for Tropical Medicine, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, OX3 7LJ, Oxford, UK;Global Health Bioethics Network, Oxford, England, UK;Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, 63110, Mae Sot, Tak, Thailand;Global Health Bioethics Network, Oxford, England, UK;Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, 63110, Mae Sot, Tak, Thailand;Mahidol Oxford Research Unit, Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, 10400, Bangkok, Thailand;Centre for Tropical Medicine, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, OX3 7LJ, Oxford, UK;Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, 63110, Mae Sot, Tak, Thailand;Mahidol Oxford Research Unit, Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, 10400, Bangkok, Thailand;Centre for Tropical Medicine, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, OX3 7LJ, Oxford, UK;Global Health Bioethics Network, Oxford, England, UK;The Ethox Centre, Department of Public Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, England, UK;Global Health Bioethics Network, Oxford, England, UK;

关键词: Ethics;    Evaluation;    Community engagement;    Community advisory boards;    Developing countries;    Thailand;    Myanmar;    Global health;    International research;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6939-15-12

 received in 2012-09-25, accepted in 2014-01-31,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundCommunity engagement is increasingly promoted as a marker of good, ethical practice in the context of international collaborative research in low-income countries. There is, however, no widely agreed definition of community engagement or of approaches adopted. Justifications given for its use also vary. Community engagement is, for example, variously seen to be of value in: the development of more effective and appropriate consent processes; improved understanding of the aims and forms of research; higher recruitment rates; the identification of important ethical issues; the building of better relationships between the community and researchers; the obtaining of community permission to approach potential research participants; and, the provision of better health care. Despite these diverse and potentially competing claims made for the importance of community engagement, there is very little published evidence on effective models of engagement or their evaluation.MethodsIn this paper, drawing upon interviews with the members of a Community Advisory Board on the Thai-Myanmar border, we describe and critically reflect upon an approach to community engagement which was developed in the context of international collaborative research in the border region.Results and conclusionsDrawing on our analysis, we identify a number of considerations relevant to the development of an approach to evaluating community engagement in this complex research setting. The paper also identifies a range of important ways in which the Community Advisory Board is in practice understood by its members (and perhaps by community members beyond this) to have morally significant roles and responsibilities beyond those usually associated with the successful and appropriate conduct of research.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Maung Lwin et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.