From the President and CEO

With Guarded Optimism, Gratitude, and Pride in Our Accomplishments

Spring is just around the corner, and this year it feels particularly welcome. After a long, dark winter, promising signs are prompting many of us to move forward with guarded optimism.

Our 2022 AAHRPP Annual Conference is an excellent example. Following a pandemicforced cancellation in 2020 and a virtual conference in 2021, this year we’ve come up with a hybrid solution. Our hope is to reunite with as many of you as possible in Denver in person. To accommodate those who cannot attend, we’re also offering a virtual option. While we are cautiously optimistic about the prospect of bringing people together, we are unabashedly enthusiastic about the content we’ll be providing and the participation of all the teachers and learners who will be meeting in whatever medium. Regardless of how you participate, you will still benefit from informative, thought-provoking presentations from experts in our field. The theme for the conference, “Community Commitment and Connection in Colorado,” is especially fitting. It speaks to our commitment and connection to each other and to the broader community we all serve. That commitment and connection have been more important than ever during the pandemic. They have fueled our resilience, our gratitude for one another, and our determination to move forward. Certainly, the past two years have been wearying. We want the health of the world to improve, both medically and in terms of greater justice for all—and the pace of that change can sometimes be disheartening. On the other hand, there are glimmers of light, and we’re fortunate that we witness that light every day in the research community. Our incredible cadre of professionals and volunteers is the change we want to see personified. Buoyed by your energy and support, AAHRPP is as productive as we’ve ever been. We are about to launch a new website and an online accreditation management system that reflect your input. As you will read in this newsletter, we recently completed our most comprehensive survey ever of HRPP administrators. We also are tapping the talent of our Collaborative AAHRPP Network to establish working groups on three topics of great interest to our accredited organizations: reaccreditation, DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion), and single IRB review. The first group has already begun meeting. Of course, we continue to serve as a resource for accredited and not-yet-accredited organizations and to advance our goal of establishing one standard for research protections worldwide. We remain focused on making things better—and, with your help, we’re succeeding. For that, as always, we are most grateful. I look forward to your participation, in whatever form it takes, at our conference May 24-26.

With appreciation,

Elyse I. Summers, JD

AAHRPP President and CEO