Setting up a Regional Faculty

Background

The goal of the Global Health Clinical Trials Programme (GHT) is to promote and make easier the conduct of non-commercial clinical research across all diseases in resource-poor settings. We have established a dedicated, collaborative, non-disease-specific web forum to help researchers with clinical trial operations, design, methods and interpretation of regulations. This tool offers practical guidance and encourages the sharing of best practices.

The programme is based on the ethos of an open collaborative organisation with contributions and direction coming from users of the website.

In order to increase the impact and uptake of the platform at a local level we seek to facilitate the creation of local faculties. The role of the faculties will be to: 

• increase awareness of the platform
• identify examples of good practice locally and support the reporting and submission of these to the platform
• establish links with various regional trial site and organisations
• encourage site to share their tools and resources
• hold local workshops and meetings
• encourage local groups to make places available on any training courses, events or workshops to local GHT members 

The Process

The regional faculties will be comprised of local members of the GHT programme and led by a self-elected coordinating committee. There will need to be a coordinator (1) chairman (1), a coordinating committee (6). Members of this faculty and committee will be providing their time for free and their role within the faculty will be described in a ‘terms of reference’ document. An area on the GHT website will be established for each regional faculty and there will be a space for posting events, courses and opportunities.

A starting point will be a coordinator. They might be appointed by the GHT management team, or someone who has out themselves forward. Typically these are envisioned to be volunteer roles but it might be possible to provide limited funding to pay people on contract for this role if the right person is seriously keen and willing to dedicate the time into developing a faculty in a specific region.

The role of the coordinator might include:

• Identify local researchers who would be interested in being involved in establishing a regional faculty
• Organise these interested people and establish a documented mechanism for voting in a chair and 6 committee members (replaced or re-elected annually)
• Build local contacts with a wide range of groups engaged in clinical trials in the region
• Encourage these groups to share their resources and submit these to the GHT platform
• Contribute to the GHT website by writing blogs and joining discussions
• Identify local activities and announce them on the GHT site
• Persuade local organisations to allow a set number of members of GHT to attend their training courses, seminars or other related local events
• Build relationships with local researchers and others (regulators, ethics committees) and encourage them to register and contribute to the GHT programme
• Administrate the dedicated area of the website for the regional faculty

Next Steps

If there is interest in setting up a region faculty please get in touch via info@globalhealthtrials.org where you will be supported and guided through this process.

This article originally appears on the Global Health Trials resources. Please visit us for more resources relating to trials.