Social and Behavioral Sciences Institutional Review Board

Educational Requirements

UB’s Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) has adopted new initial and continuing education requirements in its ongoing effort to improve the protection of human research subjects and compliance with regulatory requirements. Courses from the Collaborative IRB Training Initiative’s (CITI) in the Protection of Human Research Subjects are replacing the currently required NIH human research protections training. CITI courses have become recognized as the national standard for human research education. This revised educational program includes a continuing education component that will need to be kept current by completing a continuing education program every three years.

The CITI program represents a significant improvement to the educational component of the HRPP including the addition of continuing education. In order to transition to the new program, completion of the appropriate CITI program basic course will be accepted as fulfilling continuing education requirements for individuals who have previously completed the NIH tutorial and initial education requirements for those who have not previously completed the NIH tutorial. Therefore, after September 1, 2007 the UB IRBs will only accept CITI course completion within the past 3 years in fulfillment of the educational requirements for study personnel on all applications for review. The CITI training required will be the course appropriate to the particular type of research:

• For protocols submitted and reviewed by either the Health Sciences IRB (HSIRB) or Children and Youth IRB (CYIRB) all project key study personnel must complete the Biomedical CITI course.
• For protocols submitted and reviewed by the Social and Behavioral Sciences IRB (SBSIRB) all project key study personnel must complete the Behavioral CITI course.

Note that if you conduct biomedical research and social/behavioral research, key study personnel may need to complete both courses.

All investigators and their key study personnel are encouraged to complete the CITI tutorial as soon as possible so that future IRB approvals are not delayed. Completion of each track of the CITI course will take about 2½ - 4 hrs depending on your experience and knowledge about human subjects research.

Tips for Using CITI:

1. Be certain to designate “SUNY- University at Buffalo” as an institution affiliated with your current CITI username. Buffalo State also uses CITI but for the UB IRB’s to be able to access completion records, “SUNY- University at Buffalo” must be used.
2. If you have completed the CITI course for another institution within the past 3 years, you can add “SUNY- University at Buffalo” as an institution affiliated with your current CITI username and then complete any modules required by UB that have not been logged by the system as completed.
3. University at Buffalo personnel are NOT able to provide you with your username and/or password. If you forget your username or password, the “Forgot Username or Password” utility on the CITI homepage may be of assistance.
4. While the entire Course does not have to be completed at one sitting, the grade book for each “chapter” or “module” is only updated after the module quiz is completed. If you log into a module and get distracted before completing it, you might be timed out of that module.
5. Work on only one course at a time. Flipping between incomplete behavioral and biomedical courses has at times cause loss of completion records.

The NIH On-line Tutorial ( http://cme.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/learning/humanparticipant-protections.asp ) will still be accepted in fulfillment of educational requirements through September 1, 2007.