HRPP Newsletter – December 2025
Personnel Announcement
It is with mixed emotions that we announce the retirement of our long-time colleague, John Cejka.
John began his career with the IRB Office in 2001, back when we reviewed mountains of paper research applications and transported them by cart to IRB meetings! Over the years, he has been a steady presence through major milestones, including the advent of HIPAA, the implementation of ARROW, and most recently, serving as a vital source of institutional memory during our adoption of the Toolkit.
John has worked closely with countless research teams over the years, who will no doubt miss his expertise, experience, and collaborative spirit.
John’s last day in the office will be January 9, 2026. Please join us in wishing him all the best as he embarks on this exciting next chapter!
IRB Reliance Email Data Loss
The IRBReliance@wisc.edu email account experienced an outage and loss of data on the afternoon of 12/10/2025 from approximately 1-4 PM. If you received an undeliverable message from the Reliance Team during that time, please resend that message. While we were able to recover a small amount of correspondence from the previous 30 days, if you are waiting for a reply from the Reliance Team, please send us an extra ping. The Reliance Team will also be reaching out to study teams that have had recent consults or potential future reliance needs in an attempt to recover those email conversations. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions.
New Umbrella & Outcomes Guidance
The Investigator Manual has been updated to provide study teams with additional guidance about umbrella and outcomes protocols, including examples of the types of studies for which an umbrella protocol may be appropriate, examples of what should not be included in an umbrella protocol, the kind of information that would need to be included in the application, and when changes are required.
Survey Reminder
The IRB is looking for feedback on our IRB Efficiency Project via a survey sent to PIs and points of contact listed on any ARROW applications. Please complete this survey at your earliest convenience as we highly value your feedback. The survey will remain open until January 5th.
Professional Development Workshop
The Recruitment and Retention Resource Center at ICTR will be holding its final event in the “How We Talk With Research Participants: The Art of Communication” workshop on Tues., Dec. 16, 12-1:30pm, via Zoom. Registration link: https://ictr.wisc.edu/how-we-talk-with-research-participants-the-art-of-communication/
This event, “Conversations That Build Connections”, will include a panel discussion with UW researchers and study team members who have deep experience communicating with participants across many research topics and populations. The panelists will discuss how they build trust with research participants, communicate complex information, handle difficult situations, and practice self-care. All are welcome to join, and recordings of past events in the workshop series are available on the registration page.
Reminder: Research Community Trainings
The IRB Office is currently planning next year's research community trainings. Please take a couple minutes to share your feedback on the topics you'd most like to see us cover. The survey can be accessed here.