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Implementation
and Enactment of the Guidelines
AcademyHealth
is a professional organization lacking formal enforcement authority. At
best, it can use its suasion to identify ethical practices that act as
moral standards for others. Nevertheless, AcademyHealth’s guidelines
can serve as a backdrop against which individuals and institutions can
evaluate their own behavior and educate their trainees, as well as a resource
when managing difficult ethical situations. The Committee believes that
a set of ethical guidelines outlining accepted behavior will serve health
services researchers well.
To implement
the spirit of this policy, AcademyHealth urges the following substantive
changes.
- Organizations
entering into grant and contract agreements for research and analysis
with sponsors should require that the agreement contains explicit statements
allowing researchers to be free to analyze the data, draw their own
conclusions, and disseminate the results. The agreement should specify
the outcome measures, data sources, methods of analysis, and mode/timing
of the release of results required by the sponsor and agreed to by the
researcher; if not specified, these items must be at the sole discretion
of the researcher.
Contracts
should also specify that all restrictive requirements necessitated by
the sponsor may be publicly disclosed by the researcher. In addition,
contracts should contain information regarding the amount of time that
the sponsor has for review of the results prior to reporting; this time
is preferably two months, but should not exceed six months, except in
extraordinary circumstances.
- Journals
that publish health services research should adopt policies that require
disclosure of sponsors’ involvement in the research, especially
in identifying the objectives, measures, data sources, methods of analysis,
and interpretation. These disclosures should accompany the reporting
of the research results.
- AcademyHealth
and other supporters of research should increase awareness of these
guidelines in the field and among research sponsors, taking whatever
actions are feasible collectively to encourage research sponsors to
employ practices consistent with these guidelines.
- Researchers
and policy analysts should adhere to these guidelines in the conducting
of their research and whenever they are engaged in advocacy. They should
clearly and consistently distinguish their researcher and advocacy roles
when they might be confused by observers, disclose the sponsorship of
their work, any personnel payments for research and advocacy work their
have received, and any political, legal, or other interests in their
research.
- Institutions
that train or sponsor training of health services researchers should
include instruction in conflict of interest and these guidelines as
part of that training.
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