Working with Community Agencies Posted on January 20, 2009 Dr. José Szapocznik describes three techniques to improve transportability.

We've worked with agencies that didn't have that background, and it's tough. And often we've guided them to hire someone who had some research expertise because it's difficult to give an entire team training from scratch. So often if we're able to bring someone at a Master's level who's participated in a research study just helps to create some structure around which the agency can organize its studies.

But we also provide a lot of training. We provide training from what's a clinical trial, how do you conduct a clinical trial, what is the specific clinical trial?

Everything is highly manualized so that they're able to look at the guidelines at any time. We obviously conduct training on ethics and how do we handle all regulatory issues, informed consent, human subjects. We do a lot of on-site work.

And we also have quality management monitors that go out from our office and go to the agencies. And they review in great detail what the, how the study's being conducted so that they are able to identify very early and on an ongoing basis, any deviations and then provide training right on site not only to the person who's directing the effort, but also to the people who are carrying out the work.