Advancing Donation Research Clinical Trials: Current Landscape and role of PFD Partner

This presentation is part of the CDTRP 2024 Patient, Family and Donor Research Forum.
Advancing Donation Research Clinical Trials: Current Landscape and role of PFD Partner
Charles Weijer is a professor of medicine, epidemiology & biostatistics, and philosophy at Western University in London, Canada. Charles is an internationally recognized expert in research ethics. His publications on the duty of care in clinical research, the ethical analysis of study benefits and harms, and empowering communities in research have been broadly influential. Charles co-led a collaboration that produced the first international ethics guidelines for cluster randomized trials.He has also collaborated with Dr. Adrian M. Owen on a project exploring the ethics of functional neuroimaging after severe brain injury. Charles’ current work explores the ethics of research involving imminently dying patients, and ethical issues in organ donation, including the use of normothermic regional perfusion.
Laurie Blackstock is an intercultural facilitator and learning designer in the Ottawa area.She gained firsthand knowledge of the deceased organ and tissue donor process when her husband, Stephen Belliveau, experienced neurological death in January 2017.In 2018, Laurie told her husband’s story as a witness on behalf of the Kidney Foundation of Canada to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health. She then became the PFD Co-Lead for CDTRP Theme 1: Improving the Culture of Donation for three years.Since then she has contributed to several research projects.Laurie joins us today as a PFD Partner with theNormothermic Regional Perfusion (NRP)ethics pilot study led by CDTRP Research Innovation Grant awardee Charles Weijer. Sheis also currently a member of a PFD team led by Charles on improving donor family experiences with organ and tissue donation.