making law and public health work together
These last few weeks have brought a new challenge: getting my thesis work plan approved by the Tufts IRB (Institutional Review Board). For those who don't know what that is, it's a group of scientists in an institution who look at research proposals to make sure that we aren't hurting anyone or violating any patient rights in our research. In reality, it's mostly just a pain for MPH students because we're usually just interacting with people's information, not people themselves. The problem is that we're dealing with scientific research-oriented people on one hand and legal research-oriented on the other. Scientific research and legal research have two different sets of ethical standards, and I'm not well-versed in either of them, really. The good news is that we're surrounded by people who are. The challenge is getting them to talk to each other and figure out how to accommodate the two different sets of rules. Well, that, and finding a few hours to sleep each night.