Leslie Wolf, Georgia State Law professor and director of the Center for Law, Health & Society, was appointed to the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP) in December.
The committee provides expert advice and recommendations to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on issues pertaining to the protection of human subjects in research. Wolf will be one of 11 voting public members. SACHRP members are appointed to four-year terms.
“Having spent almost two decades working to protect human subjects while facilitating vital research, I am honored to serve as a SACHRP member and have the opportunity to inform federal policy on human subjects protections,” Wolf said.
Wolf has focused on ethical issues in her research. Before joining the Georgia State Law faculty in 2007, she was on faculty at the University of California San Francisco. As a member of the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies Policy and Ethics Core, she provided advice to prevention scientists on how to protect human subjects while conducting cutting-edge HIV/AIDS research, often among vulnerable populations.
Wolf also served on the UCSF institutional review board, which reviews research involving human subjects before it begins to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects. She also served on the UCSF embryonic stem cell review committee.
Wolf’s research has tackled a number of human research issues. Her research on Certificates of Confidentiality, a legal tool that facilities the conduct of important, but sensitive research, has established her as the leading expert on them. She presented her research team’s findings on certificates to SACHRP, which later released recommendations on improving confidentiality protections.
Wolf also presented her research findings on IRB conflicts of interest to the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections. She is widely known for her work on research involving stored biological specimens.
Since coming to Georgia State, Wolf has regularly taught a course on human subjects research. She was recently appointed as an education liaison for the Georgia State Human Research Protections Program.