"Ethics is not a checklist"

What does ethical research look like in a global health context, where partnerships span continents and no two situations are ever the same? After one month at ITM, Ethics and Compliance Officer Jared Howes reflects on the challenges and opportunities of building a shared ethics culture across the institute and its global network.

JARED While much of my work happens behind the scenes, supporting the ethics review process and conducting compliance checks, I will have the distinct pleasure of teaching various research ethics and integrity courses. This entails, particularly in a global health environment, a constant mutual exchange and learning between those 'learning' and those 'teaching'. The most important role I will assume, however, is that of a general resource and contact point for ITM colleagues, students and partners. After only one month, it is already clear that the work we do here matters—and I mean that collectively. ITM is apparently a small community, but it grows much bigger with all our partners worldwide, and together we face very real ethics challenges for which no ready-made solutions exist. When you engage in cutting-edge global health research, you will encounter cutting-edge ethics problems. How do we uphold fair partnerships with our colleagues across the world while navigating complex contexts with vastly different regulatory frameworks, resources, and cultures? ITM's pursuit of excellence is inseparable from its commitments to fairness, inclusion, respect, sustainability, and integrity. How we do our work, how we constantly learn from our partners, how we escape from a narrow checklist approach: the how matters as much as the what we accomplish.