2025-2026 Winter Closure

The IRB & SCRO offices will be closed during Stanford’s Winter Closure from Monday, December 22, 2025, through Friday, January 2, 2026, and will resume operations on Monday, January 5, 2026. View Submission Deadline information for IRB/SCRO review prior to the upcoming Winter Closure.

Stanford IRB • SCRO • APLAC
IRB • SCRO Institutional Review Board IRB • SCRO • APLAC
IRB • SCRO • APLAC

Education, Quality & Compliance

 The Education, Quality and Compliance (EQCo) team supports the Human & Animal Research Compliance Office and research community by providing and overseeing:

  1. Education on topics related to human and animal research;
  2. Quality Improvement activities to assess the effectiveness of the Human and Animal Research Programs;
  3. Compliance Monitoring to ensure adherence to applicable federal regulations, state laws, and Stanford policies and procedures; and
  4. Initiatives to evaluate and implement program improvement projects.

Education

Education and training related to human subjects research are available via videos posted on the IRB website, IRB webpages with guidance on specific topics, office hours, and live training opportunities (in person and by Zoom).

Quality Improvement

Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) activities evaluate and monitor the effectiveness of the Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) and identify areas and implement measures for improvement.  

Recent CQI reviews of the HRPP include:

Review TopicRecommendations for Improvements
Research involving prisoners
  • Staff education on state requirements
  • New prisoner checklist for staff reviews
  • Information to include in minutes of IRB meetings
Research subject to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
  • Staff education on GDPR applicability and requirements
  • Developing an International Research guidance
Assent Forms
  • Staff education on Assent form requirements
  • Simplifying language in the Assent form templates and updating instructions to address reading level
Additional VA research requirements
  • Staff education on additional VA research requirements
  • Updates to staff VA review checklist
Consent Form Research-Related Injury (RRI) language
  • Staff education on requirements for Research Related Injury disclosures in the consent form

Compliance Monitoring

Periodic compliance reviews of Stanford human subjects research are conducted to ensure adherence to applicable federal regulations, state laws, and Stanford policies and procedures subjects.  Compliance reviews include:

  • Sponsor-Investigator Research (SIR) completed consent form reviews
  • Reports of serious and/or continuing Noncompliance
  • Complaints or concerns initiated by a research participant, family member, or research team member

Initiatives

The Human and Animal Research programs are continually evaluated to identify initiatives to improve efficiency, reduce redundancy, and increase effectiveness of the programs. Recent and ongoing program improvement initiatives include:

  • IRB and IACUC website re-design
    • Improve navigation
    • Update outdated content
    • Create new guidance webpages
  • eProtocol Updates
    • New User Interface (UI) roll out
    • Updates to instructions and application questions to improve clarity
    • New features to improve compliance and efficiency