IRB and the Office of Human Research Ethics

Protecting Human Research Subjects at UNC: An Introduction

Last year, over one million people took part in research studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. Who are these participants, who is studying them and why? Read more…

Announcements

December 14, 2016: Office of Minority Health announces the release of a new resource to aid researchers: The Compendium of Publicly Available Datasets and Other Data-Related Resources (Compendium). This is a free resource that compiles in one place descriptions of and links to 132 public datasets.
December 9, 2016: Please join us in welcoming four new IRB Analysts: Celeste Cantrell, Cat Collins, Kathy Seabolt and Hsin-Lei Yao. Click here to learn more about them…
November 16, 2016: The Radiation Safety Committee policy has been revised to note that five or fewer scans do not require review only if they are FDA approved or cleared scans/x-rays. Read more…
September 16, 2016: As previously announced, beginning September 19, 2016 any new study submitted for IRB review may be required to have scientific review completed and documented. All clinical research conducted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill involving greater than minimal risk must undergo scientific review. Scientific review is a process that evaluates the scientific merit of a clinical trial protocol. To facilitate this process, a new Scientific Review section has been added to the Initial IRB application. Read more…
For older items, see News section

Organizational Structure

The Office of Human Research Ethics (OHRE) is responsible for ethical and regulatory oversight of research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that involves human subjects. OHRE supports and oversees the work of the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). The IRBs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are organized by area of expertise. The IRBs are:

Biomedical IRB (Committees A through D): Reviews research involving School of Medicine, School of Pharmacy, UNC Hospitals, and research in other units that involves biomedical interventions. Expertise is focused on medical, surgical, physiological or pharmacological studies. Includes research with drugs, devices, counseling, or other interventions. Studies that require dental expertise are reviewed by Biomedical Committee B.

Non-Biomedical IRB (Committee E): A combination of the former Behavioral and Public Health-Nursing IRBs. Reviews research in psychology, child development, education, anthropology, information and library science, social work, journalism, and many other disciplines under Academic Affairs, as well as studies from the School of Public Health, School of Nursing, nursing-related studies at UNC Hospitals, non-medical research from the Injury Prevention Research Center, Carolina Population Center, Health Promotion Disease Prevention, and Sheps Center. Expertise is focused on research in behavioral and social sciences, the humanities, epidemiology and other research in a public health or nursing context.

IRB Safety Committee: This committee handles submissions that are atypical or otherwise outside the norm, as well as Unanticipated Problems Involving Risks to Subjects or Others (UPIRSO) and other compliance issues, Humanitarian Use Devices (HUDs), emergency research on single patients under a single subject treatment IND. It meets monthly but can be convened rapidly should circumstances require.

Contact

CB# 7097
720 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
Bldg# 385, Second Floor
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7097

Ph: 919-966-3113
Fax: 919-966-7879
Help/Questions

Upcoming events

OHRE will be closed beginning Friday, December 23rd at 5 PM and will re-open on Tuesday morning, January 3rd. The IRBIS system will be available during this time.

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