Research@UIC >UIC Receives Full AAHRPP Accreditation

UIC Receives Full AAHRPP Accreditation

Dear Colleagues,

I am extremely pleased to announce that UIC has received FULL accreditation from The Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP). Full accreditation from AAHRPP recognizes the UIC program as conducting human research under the highest ethical and professional standards and providing the most comprehensive protections for research participants.

This accreditation is campus wide and includes all colleges, schools and departments at UIC. UIC is the first non-VA institution in the Chicago area to receive full AAHRPP accreditation and is now part of an elite group of just over 200 organizations to receive the prestigious accreditation. This achievement recognizes the efforts of the staff of the Office for Protection of Research Services, members of UIC's four Institutional Review Boards, and UIC investigators and research staff to ensure the sustained excellence of the human subject research program.

Under the leadership direction of Dr. Larry Danziger, UIC began working toward accreditation approximately one and a half years ago and underwent the rigorous AAHRPP application review and site visit. During this time all policies and procedures were re-written and the human subjects program was restructured. Over 200 members of the UIC research community, including investigators, IRB members and OPRS staff, were interviewed during the site visit. Following this extensive examination of our human subjects program, UIC was quickly awarded full accreditation following AAHRPP's first council meeting after the site visit. AAHRPP executives stated that UIC's application was one of the cleanest applications with the fewest comments, that our site visit was ranked as one of the best by the AAHRPP site visitors, and that the human participant program was "model" of effectiveness.

AAHRPP was incorporated in April 2001. AAHRPP employs a voluntary, peer-driven, educational model of accreditation for organizations engaged in research involving human participants. AAHRPP has two primary goals: 1) strengthening human research protections and 2) improving the quality of research.

If you have any questions regarding our AAHRPP accreditation, please contact Dr. James Fischer, Director, Office for Protection of Research Subjects, at 312-996-5549 or via email at jfischer@uic.edu.

Sincerely,

Joe G.N. “Skip” Garcia, M.D.
Vice Chancellor for Research