For the second year in a row the RCR Program in collaboration with the school of Pharmacy at JUST ( Jordan University of Science and Technology) and under the auspices of Dr. Omar Al-Jarrah, the President of JUST ;held  The 2nd International Conference on Ethics in Jordan: Clinical Trials.

The conference was held from August 2nd thru August 4th ,2017.

One of the important presentations was given by our program director Dr. Wael Al-Delaimy in which he focused on Clinical trials of drugs in less developed countries: an ethical perspective.

Also Dr. Kenneth Goodman one of the programs lead faculty members gave a presentation on Clinical research and the challenge of balancing profit and progress.

This year  members from JFDA Jordan(Jordan Food and Drug Association) were present and held distinguished presentations on various and important topics in Jordan such as Clinical studies in Jordan: current status and improvement opportunities; JFDA bioequivalence guidelines; and Jordan pharmacovigilance experience.

We also had 8 of our second year fellows who volunteered to present short presentations on ethics reflecting on their practicums or areas of expertise as follows:

• Yazan Akkam: “Nanotechnology in Jordan: ethical implications and potential health consequences”

• Basima Almomani: “Knowledge and views of Jordanian parents on ethical issues of medical research in their children”

• Hana Abu Hassan & Heyam Aldalky: ” Mental health stigma”

• Aceil Al-Khatib: ” Developing an updated Arabic version of human subjects’ topic for Islamic communities”

• Osama Alshogran: “Knowledge, views, attitudes and practice towards international committee of  medical journal editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria among faculty members of health sciences”

• Noor Almurtada: “Considerations and beliefs on donation of a tooth to science in Jordan”

• Hanin Makhloof: “The perspectives of Jordanians toward open consent form and reuse of biological material in scientific research”

Summer Course-Introduction to Research Ethics:

Our 3rd Cohort has just completed their one week face- to- face intensive summer course that was held at Jordan University of Science and Technology in Jordan.

This year the course material was given in the English language and translated to the Arabic language to accommodate those  participants who are more fluent in the Arabic language ( also for those whose secondary language is French rather than English).

By making Arabic the language of instruction, we are opening this program to all professionals in the MENA region who might be interested in advancing their career and getting involved in population research regardless of their English skills. This is a critical point. Where other programs in which the language of instruction limits access to only the elite bilingual or medical professionals, this program will remove that limitation. These are the kind of trans formative educational approaches that are needed to lift the status of research and research ethics in the region. This, to our knowledge, would be the first-ever online Arabic research ethics certificate jointly taught by a U.S. and a Jordanian institution. The uniqueness of the MENA region is that regardless of the dialect spoken, formal Arabic is the official language of schools, media and formal or official writing.

We are proud to announce that we have accepted 33 new participants to our Research Ethics Program in Jordan for the Academic Year 2017-2018.

This Year we included  participants from different parts of the MENA Region( Middle East and North Africa) in addition to our participants from Jordan, these countries are Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan.

Looking forward to a prosperous year.