How many people notice when NIH issues new Web-based training? Quite a few! OER’s new “Protecting Human Research Participants” (PHRP) tutorial, launched on March 1, 2008, registers an average of 450 new users every day. In less than four months the course approached 50,000 registrants, with over 41,000 registrants successfully completing it. OER’s PHRP tutorial registrants hail from nations around the globe, including countries as diverse as India, Australia, and Kenya, to name a few. All told, more than 4,000 researchers from outside the U.S. have taken the course.
Registrants take the course for a variety of reasons. One key motive is that since 2000, the NIH has required education on the protection of human research participants for all recipients of NIH funding for research with human subjects. While the NIH does not require that researchers complete NIH-developed training courses to qualify for funding, the popularity of such NIH training is increasing exponentially.
There are many other reasons for obtaining training in Human Research Protections. Academic faculty, for example, find it useful to assign students such NIH training to help them learn in greater depth about protecting human research participants. Research institutions and industries may also mandate education for staff performing research that is not funded by the NIH.
We all owe a debt of gratitude to research participants for making the choice to contribute to the advancement of biomedical and biobehavioral knowledge. OER is proud to promote the highest quality research models, and that means placing a priority on providing all appropriate protections for volunteers in clinical research studies.
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