After careful consideration, IRB and institutional leadership have decided to discontinue the IRB’s community panel, Panel C. One thing we learned from working with this group is that community input has the greatest impact when it happens early. Waiting until the IRB review stage is often too late for teams to meaningfully incorporate feedback into protocols, consent forms, and other study materials.

Early community involvement in study design can strengthen a protocol, improve recruitment and retention strategies, enhance participant-facing materials, and help build trust with the communities researchers hope to serve. Investigators are encouraged to identify appropriate community partners and seek their input well before submitting a study for IRB review.

For investigators and study teams, this change should have minimal impact. Studies that would have been assigned to Panel C will be reviewed by one of our other convened IRB panels–which also have community representation.

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to the Panel C members who have generously shared their time, expertise, and thoughtful review over the years. Their contributions have played an important role in supporting ethical human subjects research at the University of Utah, and we are grateful for their service.