Clinical Trials -- Benefits and Protections
October 1, 2013
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Karen Arts is the Director of Business Development, High Impact Clinical Trials Program, at the www.oicr.on.ca,Ontario Institute for Cancer Research in Toronto, Canada. Linda Bennett is the Executive Director, Canadian Rheumatology Research Consortium, www.rheumtrials.com/english.htm, Canadian Rheumatology Research Consortium. They talk about their careers, experience with family caregiving and their work as it relates to clinical trials. They discuss the benefits of clinical trials and explain the challenges in delivering the benefits. They describe the processes that protect participants and say why the protections are important. They discuss the information that people need to know ahead of participating in a clinical trial and say how the information can be obtained. They talk about the things they would like to do and see done to promote the benefits and protections of clinical trials, and share a message for parents of children who are approached about participating in clinical trials in cancer research.
Family Caregivers Unite!
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
