Jessica Dutton
Manager, Research Ethics & Regional Programs at Aurora College
Jessica Dutton, PhD, is the Manager, Research Ethics & Regional Programs at Aurora College in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. Since 2014, she has managed, coordinated, and administered the Aurora College Research Ethics Committee on a part-time basis, spending the other half of her work life pursuing a program of community-based research at the Aurora Research Institute. Jessica's research interests include community-engaged research and ethics, Northern and Indigenous peoples' health, food systems and sovereignty, and social determinants of health.
All Sessions by Jessica Dutton
Friday April 3th
B5. Reconciling Visions of Research Ethics in the Northwest Territories<span style="color:#0020C2">…more</span>
Recent efforts to expand Tri-Council funding eligibility to non-academic organizations have provided Indigenous groups the opportunity to hold and administer research funds independently – an important step towards building Indigenous capacity for leading research that affects their communities. In order to hold Tri-Council funds, organizations must establish an in-house research ethics board (REB) or identify an existing REB (an REB of record) to review all research carried out under the auspices of the organization. Given that Indigenous organizations are seeking Tri-Council eligibility to increase the direct oversight of research by Indigenous people, there may be reluctance to designate an existing REB from another organization as the REB of record. Furthermore, Indigenous organizations are responsible for considering a broader spectrum of ethics review than REBs that only apply the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS2), as they are representing community concerns at the REB review level. The Northwest Territories (NWT) provides a unique and complex environment for imagining how research ethics review can be accomplished by Indigenous organizations with multiple (and sometimes competing) spheres of representation at multiple levels. The high volume of research conducted in the territory, paired with the expansion of Tri-Council eligibility to Indigenous organizations, provides an opportunity to start interrogating the tensions between academic and Indigenous conceptions of ethical research, authority, representation, and self-determination in research. This presentation describes the progress of a study that explores review processes, priorities, and values in the NWT by working with Indigenous governing organizations to a) map the process of research review throughout the territory, b) understand how the visions of research ethics review in NWT Indigenous organizations align with and diverge from the vision articulated in TCPS2, c) collaborate on a model of research ethics review that addresses the needs of NWT communities and TCPS2. Keywrods: Indigenous, capacity building, proposed model
Celtic I