NEW BLOG FOR BEIJING

OKAY! I have found a blog space that I can use while in China. It's not as flashy as Blogger, but it's accessible! From now on, please direct yourself to -->

http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/~ewan

See you there!

IRB Success!

Yippy hooray!! Just got the GREAT news that my PPD study has passed UM IRB! Even better, it was found to be exempt from review by the IRB! That's because we won't be able to link subjects at all to their ID numbers, mainly because everything will be in Chinese.
I was so worried about this part because I wouldn't be able to start collecting data before the approval. Cheryl asked them on Wednesday to please expedite the process, and she was also able to change the original application with our revised questionnaire, so now we don't even have to amend anything! YAY!

We have had the greatest fortune with getting this study through. To think, I made up this study in February, and we submitted to IRBMED in mid-March (after IRB approval at Beijing University First Hospital...down the hallway), and now, wa-LAH! ~~~\(^O^)/~~~

Blog Access in China?

My sister in Shanghai has not been able to access this website at all. I'm wondering whether this Blogspot site is censored. Doing a basic search of the internet (e.g. this 2005 article off BBC, which is blocked in China) there does seem to be some issue. I will have to look into other options for keeping my experiences in the open.

Another 2003 article specifically on the censorship of Blogspot.

IRB Approval Pending

Things have been kind of slow with this project since we submitted our IRB application to UM-IRBMED. We received approval from the Beijing University First Hospital IRB a few weeks ago, and so stuck in our UM app immediately. According to my intl epid prof, it depends on the situation whether internationl instition approval must come before UM approval. That was the case of ours, but in some instances, UM IRB can process contingent on foreign approval. It's all very grey.

It'll take about a month to go through, but is on the expedited track, I think. We need approval before we can collect any data. Even more important for me, we need to submit an IRB amendment to add my questions of interest to the questionnaire (QQ) as well. For the time being, I'm looking to create an amended version of the QQ to be ready once we get approval.