Awards for excellence in human research protection for 2013 have been announced by Dr. Peter G. Goldschmidt, president and founder of the Health Improvement Institute.

Winner of the annual Award for Innovation was the Professionalism and Integrity in Research Program for its P.I. Program Workshop. Created by Dr. James M. DuBois and colleagues at Saint Louis University and Washington University in St. Louis, with NIH funding, this was the first remediation program for researchers who engaged in wrongdoing or persistent noncompliance. The program was developed by a team of clinical, educational, industrial-organizational and social psychologists, with guidance from experts in research ethics, regulations and administration.

Winner of the annual Award for Lifetime Achievement was Will C. van den Hoonaard. Dr. van den Hoonaard has worked the research-ethics community in various capacities, including the Canadian Interagency Panel on Research Ethics, involvement in research-ethics journals, numerous guest lectures and author and editor of several books. Dr. van den Hoonaard is professor emeritus at the University of New Brunswick and research associate at the Atlantic Center for Qualitative Research and Analysis, Saint Thomas University. Both universities are located in Fredericton, NB, Canada.

There were three recipients of an Award of Excellence for Best Practice:

• Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Office of Research Compliance & Quality Improvement, developed a policy aimed at facilitating enrollment in minimal risk data registries by allowing for an online consent process for internet-based data registries.
• The nonprofit Center for Information and Study on Clinical Research Participation (CISCRP) launched a program to ensure results of clinical trials are shared with the study volunteers who make research possible. CISCRP's Communicating Trial Results program now is being implemented by over 20 leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, helping to fulfill the research enterprise's ethical obligation to share trial findings and demonstrating a commitment to volunteers as true partners in the research process.
• Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics started the Pilot Translation Project, involving protecting the rights of research subjects with LEP (Limited English Proficiency) and increasing the opportunity for LEP subjects to participate in available research studies.