Dini Baker, Clinical Partner at Children’s Hospital of Orange County
The University of California, Irvine (UCI) and Children's Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) are in the midst of an affiliation process. Of course, the concept of affiliation and the actual process of affiliation are two very different things. Although the concept is fairly simple, the actualization process can be painful.
In our experience, the last areas to move toward affiliation are the research programs. FitBaby is the first collaborative project to move through the human subjects research ethics approval process since the affiliation, and we have been working out many particulars. Navigating the protection of human research subjects when the research teams are from different institutions requires additional planning and safeguards, particularly when one institution focuses more on academia and the other on clinical services. Even the Institutional Review Board (IRB) language has different interpretation. The principal investigators (PIs) and the research team from UCI and Charles Drew University (CDU) have begun jumping through additional human resource hoops. For example, health screening and background checks provide additional safeguards to ensure the team meets CHOC standards.
Despite the detailed process involved in the affiliation, each team has benefitted from the new arrangement. The greatest advantage for the CHOC team is the wonderful opportunity to share ideas and negotiate compromises as the project gets underway. For the UCI/CDU team, working with the CHOC team is a great opportunity to do research alongside individuals who focus on pediatric care. We are looking forward to our first recruitments of 2011 and to seeing whether adding this technology to the dynamic of high-risk infants will increase or decrease the caregiver burden. We also hope the FitBaby project will showcase this new affiliation between UCI and CHOC.
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