Advocacy in Clinical Health research

Advocacy in Clinical Health research

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In history, cases have occurred where human subjects of research have been, willingly or through criminal negligence, either infected with disease pathogens and not given medical care or left to be infected by a certain pathogen while a cure or preventive substance was available (Talley, 2012). This has led to the need of advocates to supervise all aspects of clinical health research to ensure that researchers don’t abuse the privileges enjoyed by virtue of the charter to conduct research.

An advocate in health care research means someone well placed to protect the rights of patients are adhered to. They can be considered as educators, representatives, ombudsmen, patient navigators, care managers or health advisers. Their role is to ensure that researchers adhere to best practices and help in mediating any conflicts that may arise. Advocates in research are used ensure that fair practices are adhered to and to breakdown information to the target groups. In clinical health researches, advocates have the primary duty of protecting the medical research’s human specimen (Bourgeault, 2010)

.Major issues that the advocates are concerned with include but are not limited to:

–           What or who drives the research question. This implies learning of the motivation of researchers and where funding for the research comes from (De Chesney , 2008).

-Analyzing how the researchs results will be  disseminated to various relevant individuals.

–           That the research is carried out in the context of consent under full disclosure. This means that the subjects understand wholly what type of research they are consenting to and the possible implications.

–           In recent times, clinical research has benefitted from lobbying by research advocates for funding of certain areas of medicine. This has seen a changing trend where more and more research funding is being pooled into organised advocacy lobby groups than into the research firms’ coffers (Talley, 2012)

. A most notable sector that has a beneficially of this trend is the research on breast cancer through the pink ribbon initiative.

–           That the right to confidentiality has been thoroughly covered by the researchers and no derogatory, or abusive titles have been assigned to the subjects.

–           That the researchers will not use any products or methods that have not been approved as fit for humans in their research.