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Animal Ethics Biosafety Human Research Ethics Research Integrity

(Australia) How I found a way to balance research integrity with people’s welfare – Nature (Laura McCosker | May 2022)

Posted by Dr Gary Allen in Human Research Ethics on May 20, 2022
Keywords: Australia, Good practice, Justice, Merit and integrity, Researcher responsibilities, Respect for persons

The Linked Original Item was Posted On May 4, 2022

Two hands made of words about justice and inclusion meeting above the word Respect.

Laura McCosker faced ethical dilemmas when the need to distribute COVID vaccines disrupted her research plans.

I started my PhD in February 2020, two weeks after the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in Australia. One month later, Queensland, where I am based, was in lockdown, and we spent much of the next two years under pandemic restrictions. These were scheduled to lift in December 2021, but the state government warned that a wave of COVID-19 was coming. ‘Get vaccinated’ was the message.

The research integrity discussed in this item is the integrity of a project’s design and its ability to achieve its stated goals.  For research with vulnerable people in difficult circumstances, it can be incredibly challenging to treat participants with respect, dignity and care.  For Laura, her research with homeless Australians in the midst of a terrifying pandemic could have been impossible.  This Nature piece discusses how she was able to juggle the integrity of the research while at the same time treating her participants with the greatest of respect.

My PhD research at Griffith University in Brisbane was intended to evaluate well-being support programmes for people who are homeless. But once COVID-19 took effect this became infeasible, so I pivoted to researching vaccination strategies for people who are homeless.

To do this, I connected with Dona Hooshmand, a public-health doctor who was running mobile COVID-19 vaccination clinics for this population in southeast Queensland.vg`udy found that 95% of people who are homeless in Australia have a mobile phone.)

But the team was very small — often just me and the doctor — so I soon became involved in running the clinics. This involved designing fliers, coordinating with staff at sites, providing education about COVID-19, assisting with gaining consent, organizing paperwork, doing data entry and helping with set-up. This ensured that as many people as possible could be vaccinated before the restrictions lifted in December and the wave of cases peaked.

How I found a way to balance research integrity with people’s welfare
Laura McCosker faced ethical dilemmas when the need to distribute COVID vaccines disrupted her research plans.

Related Reading

Research Integrity: Ensuring Trust in Global Research – Scholarly Kitchen (Natalie Simon | February 2022)

 For Vulnerable Populations, the Thorny Ethics of Genetic Data Collection – UnDark (Adrian Pecotic | September 2019)

Respect for Human Vulnerability: The Emergence of a New Principle in Bioethics (Papers: Henk ten Have | 2015)

Rethinking the Vulnerability of Minority Populations in Research (Papers: Wendy Rogers and Margaret Meek Lange | 2013)

Vulnerability in Research Ethics: a Way Forward (Papers: Margaret Meek Lange, et al | 2013)

Why bioethics needs a concept of vulnerability (Papers: Wendy Rogers, et al | 2012)

Vulnerability in Research: Defining, Applying, and Teaching the Concept (Books: Sana Loue & Bebe Loff | 2019)

Vulnerable patients – easy targets for companies willing to sacrifice ethics for profits – The Hill (Jody Lyneé Madeira | May 2018)

How We Found Sources for Our Research Misconduct Story — And How You Can Help Us Find More – ProPublica Illinois (Jodi S. Cohen | April 2018)

Responsibilities in international research: a new look revisited (Papers: Solomon R Benatar & Peter A Singer | 2010)

Reflections on ethical dilemmas in working with so-called ‘vulnerable’ and ‘hard-to-reach’ groups: experiences from the Foodways and Futures project (Papers: Karolina Gombert et al 2015)

Rethinking Vulnerability and Research: Defining the Need for a Post-Research Ethics Audit (Papers: Chesmal Siriwardhana 2015)

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