Petrie-Flom Center Executive Director Appointed to SACHRP

Holly Fernandez Lynch, J.D., M.Bioethics, Executive Director of the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School, has been appointed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell to a four-year term as a member of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP).  SACHRP is a Federal Advisory Committee charged with providing expert advice and recommendations to the Secretary on issues and topics pertaining to the protection of human research subjects. To date, SACHRP has focused its attention on areas such as research involving children, prisoners, and individuals with impaired decision-making capacity; informed consent and the use of biospecimens; harmonization of human subjects regulations and guidance; the reduction of regulatory burden; the HIPAA Privacy Rule; community-engaged research, and accreditation. 

Holly will bring a range of expertise in human subjects research to this new role from her prior experience in private practice counseling pharmaceutical company clients on clinical research issues, her work as a bioethicist advising the Division of AIDS on research ethics in the conduct of HIV/AIDS trials, and her service as a staff member supporting President Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, where she worked on “Ethically Impossible: STD Research in Guatemala from 1946-1948.”  Holly has served as a member of the Institutional Review Board at The Fenway Institute, and as a member of expert working groups at the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center at Harvard. Alongside Petrie-Flom Center Faculty Director I. Glenn Cohen, Holly is Co-Lead of the Law and Ethics Initiative of the Football Players Health Study at Harvard University, as well as Co-Lead of the Center’s Involvement with the Regulatory Foundations, Ethics, and Law Program of Harvard Catalyst, Harvard’s Clinical and Translational Science Center.  She is also co-editor, with I. Glenn Cohen, of Human Subjects Research Regulation: Perspectives on the Future (MIT Press 2014).

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff

The Petrie-Flom Center staff often posts updates, announcements, and guests posts on behalf of others.

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