G06 - Managing Dual/Multiple Relationships: Grappling With Identity and Interpersonal Boundaries in Human Subjects Research

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While HRPPs and investigators are comfortable examining financial conflicts of interest, conflicts that stem from who we are, our relationships, and our roles or positions within a community are both harder to talk about, harder to manage, and maybe harder to identify. As our understanding of research equity becomes more nuanced, we expect more involved community participation, consultation, and partnership in all fields of human subjects research. HRPPs and IRBs now need to carefully approach the conflict and bias that can arise when investigators themselves, and the research staff they hire, not to mention the IRB members, are members of the communities to be studied. Lived-experience gives these teams crucially important perspective and credibility. It may also mean they feel pulled in different directions by conflicting behavioral norms, biases, and expectations. Identifying ways to encourage and celebrate authenticity, while avoiding pitfalls in these multiple relationships, is critical to inclusive and equitable science. Speakers will contend with this challenge, engaging with both the profound importance of representation and the ethical minefield of multiple relationships and our intersectional lives.