Community Advisory Boards (CABs) are a critical component of the CHRU’s community engagement strategy and represent an important link between local communities and CHRU’s three main clinical research sites. CHRU has approximately 650 registered clinical trial participants and the Community Advisory Board (CAB) is responsible for outreach and liaison with the participants.
The CHRU CAB is a member of the Global Community Advisory Board of the Aids Clinical Trials Group (ACTG).
The CAB member role is to:
- Ensure that scientific priorities reflect the needs of people in Johannesburg and Durban who are living with HIV/AIDS
- Protect the interests of research participants
- Promote the inclusion of all populations in clinical trials
- Advocate for innovative, efficient and timely clinical trials and
- Ensure that networks and funders are aware of CHRU community concerns.
CAB members participate in the Scientific Committees and Global Community Advisory Board of the ACTG Network. Participation by communities takes place through the Community Scientific Subcommittee (CSS) of the GCAB. The CHRU CSS members are chosen from the CHRU sites where ACTG studies are conducted.
Once a year, a CHRU CAB member is selected to attend the ACTG annual conference and present the South African experience. They return to share best practice with other CAB members and CHRU communities.
The central function of the CABs is to provide support to the researchers, by providing advice about proposed studies, sentiments and opinions of any new research protocols, progress of existing studies, and dissemination of results from completed studies.
CAB membership is voluntary and members agree to certain terms of membership as outlined in the site-specific CAB constitutions.