UAMS Institutional Review Board may serve as the single, reviewing IRB for multi-site research. When you wish for UAMS to be the reviewing IRB for a multi-site study, please let the UAMS Institutional Review Board office know as soon as you can. Investigators must complete a request form to the UAMS IRB to serve as the SIRB for outside sites.
Please click here to access form
- UAMS will need to initiate a reliance agreement between UAMS and the relying site(s). UAMS prefers to document reliance through the SMART IRB system, when possible.
- When a non-UAMS collaborator from an institution that does not have a Federalwide assurance (FWA) will be engaged in human research reviewed by the UAMS IRB, an agreement between the non-UAMS collaborator and the University is required. This agreement is called UAMS IRB Unaffiliated Investigator Agreement and it extends our FWA to cover the non-UAMS collaborator. Contact the UAMS IRB for more information.
- In some cases, UAMS will serve as both the reviewing IRB and participating site. In this case a “site addition” will need to be created to document UAMS as a site. Contact the UAMS IRB for more information.
- Remember — while the original CLARA submission process is going on, study teams, with the assistance of the UAMS Institutional Review Board’s external institutional review board coordinator, should start collecting the necessary information from the participating sites. This information can include sorting out which reliance agreement will be used and getting the reliance agreement approved and signed. Then, after main study approval, and after you receive the required paperwork from each site, you’ll submit a separate site addition modification form in CLARA to add each site. This UAMS Institutional Review Board blog post describes the process for getting a site added. Once the site is on the list, you’ll complete the site addition modification, unloading the site-specific consent form and HIPAA authorization, a copy of the signed reliance agreement, and a copy of the local site questionnaire, as applicable.