SACHRP Names New Chairman

The HHS Secretary's Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP) has a new chairman, Samuel Tilden, following the resignation last November of Ernest Prentice.

Tilden, a pediatrician who has been actively involved in conducting clinical trials in children, previously served as chair of the Committee on Bioethics of the Alabama chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Prentice served as SACHRP chair for four years.

Tilden is joined at SACHRP by three new members: David Strauss, chairman of the institutional review board (IRB) at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and director of the Office of Human Subjects Research at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Department of Psychiatry; Lisa Leiden, director of research support and compliance at the University of Texas at Austin; and Patricia Marshall, professor of bioethics and anthropology at Case Western Reserve University. The three were sworn in as SACHRP members during the committee's March 29 meeting.

Also during the meeting, the committee voted to "strongly recommend" that the HHS Office for Human Research Protections require research institutions to ensure initial and continuing ethics training for investigators and other members of clinical research teams, IRB members and staff, and institutional signatory officials and human protection administrators.