News Release Listing
Contact: Thomas Shapley, (360) 902-8007,
thomas.shapley@dshs.wa.gov
Contact: T. Howard Stone, (360) 902-8075 ,
howard.stone@dshs.wa.gov
June 11, 2012
T. Howard Stone named new head of Washington State's Institutional Review Board
OLYMPIA – T. Howard Stone, who has focused his entire career on legal and research issues that protect the rights, privacy and welfare of participants in human research programs, will now lead the Washington State Institutional Review Board.
As the Institutional Review Board administrator for WSIRB, Stone is designated to lead the Human Research Review Section of the Department of Social and Health Services Research Data and Analysis Division. He will review, oversee and approve the Division’s human research in accordance to federal, state and other applicable laws, regulations and policies.
WSIRB is responsible for reviewing human research conducted by the Departments of Social and Health Services, Health Care Authority, Labor and Industries and Health. The formal reviews conducted by the board are to ensure that the rights and welfare of research subjects are protected when the research involves:
• Clients identified by a Department for research,
• Identifiable records held by a Department or its contractors,
• Department employees as subjects,
• Department funding, including federal pass-through funds, and
• Department facilities, such as the state mental hospitals.
Jody Becker-Green, senior director of the DSHS Planning, Performance and Accountability office, said, "We are fortunate to have Howard in charge of this important position. He is well known and respected nationally in the areas of health and biomedical ethics and brings excellent leadership, organizational and communications to the Board.
"Howard will bring stability, fairness and strong human-subject protections to Washington citizens while ensuring and supporting much needed research in the state," she said.
Stone was a federal practice consultant with the Armed Forces Services Corporation and a human subject protections scientist with the U.S. Department of the Army.
He received his law degree at New York Law School in 1994. He began his career as a faculty associate and later assistant professor for Department of Preventive and Community Medicine, School of Medicine, and Institute for the Medical Humanities and the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Texas in Galveston.
Stone joined the faculty of the University of Houston Law Center, Health Law and Policy Institute as an adjunct professor of law. In 2001, he became associate professor for Department of Family and Community Medicine, and the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.
In 2006 he was appointed associate professor of Bioethics at the Center for Biomedical Research, University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler, Texas. There he continued to conduct and execute large, multi-site projects applied to bioethics and human subject protection issues funded by the National Institutes of Health.
FOR ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND, CONTACT:
Thomas Shapley, Senior Director Public Affairs, DSHS, 360-902-8007
Jody Becker-Green, Senior Director, Planning, Performance and Accountability, DSHS, 360-902-7790
DSHS does not discriminate and provides equal access to its programs and services for all persons without regard to race, color, gender, religion, creed, marital status, national origin, sexual orientation, age, veteran’s status or the presence of any physical, sensory or mental disability.
