Date:
Location:
"Post-Belmont Research Ethics: Reporting Personal Exposure Data to Participants"
Speaker:
Phil Brown, University Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Health Science; Director of the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute, Northeastern University.
Co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.
Contact:
Shana Ashar
shana_ashar@hks.harvard.edu
Chair:
Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School.
Lunch is provided if you RSVP via our online form by Thursday of the week before the event.
Abstract:
As the number of biomonitoring and household exposure studies expand in government, academic, and advocacy settings, ethical issues arise around reporting back results for contaminants with uncertain toxicity data, few or no clinical health guidelines, and where the efficacy of exposure reduction strategies is uncertain. Research participants overwhelmingly want their research results. Report-back benefits include increasing retention and recruitment, advancing environmental literacy, informing and empowering participants to take action to reduce exposures, encouraging shifts in government and industry practices, and helping researchers identify new sources of exposure through consultation with participants. IRBs have often been a roadblock to sharing data with participants, but some have been able to adopt this newer framework. “Post-Belmont ethics” supplement the clinical, individual orientation of human ‘subjects’ protection with a more community-based participatory research framework of engaged collaboration and empowerment. Biography: Phil Brown is University Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Health Science at Northeastern University, where he directs the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute. He is the author of No Safe Place: Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action, and Toxic Exposures: Contested Illnesses and the Environmental Health Movement, and co-editor of Social Movements in Health, and Contested Illnesses: Citizens, Science and Health Social Movements. He studies biomonitoring and household exposure, social policy concerning flame retardants and perfluorinated compounds, reporting back data to participants, and health social movements. He directs an NIEHS T-32 training program, “Transdisciplinary Training at the Intersection of Environmental Health and Social Science.” He heads the Community Outreach and Translation Core of Northeastern’s Children’s Environmental Health Center (Center for Research on Early Childhood Exposure and Development in Puerto Rico/CRECE) and both the Research Translation Core and Community Engagement Core of Northeastern’s Superfund Research Program (Puerto Rico Testsite to Explore Contamination Threats (PROTECT).
