Bellberry receives Australian first recognition

Bellberry awarded AAHRPP accreditation

Bellberry has become the first organisation in Australia to achieve international accreditation for excellence and ethically sound processes in running Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs).

The recognition has come from the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP), which is based in the USA. The AAHRPP site accreditation team visited Australia to conduct an extensive review of Bellberry’s operations earlier this year.

Bellberry’s CEO Kylie Sproston has welcomed the news.

“This is a huge boost at a time when Bellberry is firmly focused on the safe continuation or adjustment of current clinical trial activities and the welfare of participants on those trials,” Ms Sproston said.

Elyse Summers, CEO and President of AAHRPP said that AAHRPP’s Council on Accreditation (Council) met (remotely) and awarded Bellberry full AAHRPP Accreditation.

“The site visit team and Council were highly impressed with Bellberry’s robust human research protections program (HRPP), which serves as an excellent model in Australia for the ethical review of and education about research involving human participants,” said Ms Summers.

Ms Sproston said, “The accreditation is testament to all the hard work undertaken by our staff, the broader Bellberry team, our HREC Community, and the researchers that we serve”.

The primary purpose of AAHRPP accreditation is to strengthen protections for research participants. However, the benefits of AAHRPP’s comprehensive approach extend beyond participants to the research enterprise as a whole. Each accreditation advances that objective and helps build public trust and confidence in research.

Long regarded as the gold standard, AAHRPP accreditation is becoming the norm for quality research programs in the US. All major U.S. independent institutional review boards (IRBs) are AAHRPP accredited. More than 60 percent of U.S. research-intensive universities and 65 percent of U.S. medical schools are either AAHRPP accredited or have begun the accreditation process.

AAHRPP-accredited organisations have been recognised to have more efficient operations, provide more comprehensive protections, and produce high-quality data. AAHRPP-accredited organisations also tend to have more streamlined, effective policies and procedures.

AAHRPP recently published their May newsletter which includes an article on Bellberrys accreditation: https://www.aahrpp.org/