The CCTS Regulatory Support and Research Ethics key function integrates faculty, staff, and community expertise in bioethics, regulatory knowledge, and research integrity to provide investigators, community practitioners, trainees, and research participants with a single point of access to the spectrum of ethical and regulatory committees and support services applicable to clinical and translational research.

Regulatory Support and Research Ethics seeks to establish an interdisciplinary bioethics and research integrity culture within the CCTS and to ensure that CCTS investigators and community partners maintain high levels of regulatory knowledge and accord appropriate priority to research protections.

• Regulatory Support Unit that provides study initiation support and development, reporting, maintenance and archiving of IRB and other compliance documents.
• Research Participant Advocate to provide support to research participants and to oversee quality improvement on CCTS clinical and translational studies.
• Quality Improvement Program focused on supporting investigators and study coordinators at the outset of clinical studies and throughout the continuum of clinical and translational research.
• Bioethics and Research Integrity Committee (BRIC) whose members possess a wide range of expertise and who are available to consult with individual investigators on bioethics, research integrity and regulatory matters.
• IRB Consortium initiative to reduce barriers to research engaging practice-based research networks and community partners.
• Research Compliance Roundtables to share identified regulatory and compliance needs among appropriate university research support units.
• Development of courses on responsible conduct of research and research ethics within CCTS curricula.

For a comprehensive guide to institutional authorizations, ethical principles, policies and procedures, and unit and personnel responsibilities for human research protections, please review the document below.

The University of Kentucky is fully accredited for human research protections through the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Program, Inc.