HREBA safeguards the rights and welfare of individuals who volunteer to participate in research by ensuring ethical principles have been considered by researchers and applied prior to and throughout the conduct of the research.
The Health Research Ethics Board of Alberta (HREBA) is hosted by Alberta Innovates and consists of three committees – the Cancer Committee, the Clinical Trials Committee and the Community Health Committee. These committees provide ethical reviews and ongoing ethical oversight of cancer and community-based research involving humans, their information and biological samples.
HREBA safeguards the rights and welfare of individuals who volunteer to participate in research by ensuring ethical principles have been considered by researchers and applied prior to and throughout the conduct of the research.
While focused on the protection of research participants, HREBA wants to ensure that research maximizes benefit while minimizing harms.
HREBA applies core principles of the Tri-Council Policy Statement – Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans and other applicable regulations (i.e. HIA, Health Canada, FDA, ICH GCP) which includes:
HREBA’s committees are composed of a cross-disciplinary group of individuals including doctors, members of the scientific community, non-scientific members with specific expertise, including ethicists, lawyers, privacy experts and community members from across the province.
These committees meet monthly to review all cancer research and research conducted by private practice physicians/organizations which are not under the oversight or have an existing agreement with the University of Alberta or the University of Calgary.
Although non-research projects don’t require the approval of an REB, they still involved people and their information and therefore similar ethical principles should be considered.
A pRoject Ethics Community Consensus Initiative (ARECCI) provides support to project leads and/or organization in assessing the ethical risks of projects that don’t require research ethics approval. Visit the ARECCI page for more information.
Executive Director, Health Platforms