Is your research HEALTH research?

HREA Act, section 2(d) defines “health research involving human subjects” as activities whose primary goal is to generate knowledge in relation to human health, health care and health care systems, and involving human beings as research subjects, health care information respecting human beings or human biological material.

This includes all research related to health education (e.g. curriculum development in nursing or medicine).  Health research does not include tests on non-healthcare equipment or tools to be used by humans, even where the research methods may put humans at risk (e.g. automobile or helicopter safety studies, research to study early childhood learning patterns, human kinetic research to establish parameters of safety for sports equipment).

To note: health research being conducted where the researcher is not affiliated with MUN and participants or data are not about Newfoundland and Labrador or its population does not require local ethics review.

In addition, national health surveys being conducted where the researcher is not affiliated with MUN that include Newfoundlanders and Labradoreans as participants, but do not identify Newfoundland and Labrador as an aggregate and do not report findings specific to Newfoundland and Labrador or to aggregates within Newfoundland and Labrador, does not require local ethics review.