Hello! My name is Noor Ali, and I am now a second-year Master's in Public Health candidate on the Global Health Track! My practicum experience is helping to build institutional review board capacity in Liberia. I am working alongside Dr. Troy Moon, Dr. Elizabeth Heitman, and Dr. Marie Martin. This project was funded through the USAID PEER Liberia project and serves to provide an up-to-date analysis of the strengths and needs of Liberia's current research ethics review infrastructure, including evaluation of organizational processes, human resources, as well as relevant laws and policies in ethical research within Liberia's biomedical research institutions as seen by committee members.

My work started at the beginning of January when I was tasked to evaluate data and create a needs assessment report, which laid the foundation for our work. From there, we set up meetings with our Liberian colleagues to discuss our path forward. There are currently three established IRBs within Liberia and two that are new. After our discussion with our colleagues, the team decided to create a two-part training session. The first part was going to be with the leadership of each IRBs. Dr. Moon traveled to Liberia while the rest of us joined in virtually for the two-day conference with the administration. Below are pictures of that event. 

I have enjoyed working with our Liberian colleagues and look forward to working with them in the future. After the conference with the leadership, we will have a four-part session with the members of the IRBs and discuss critical steps forward. On day one of the member's conference, I will present the needs assessment results.