Examining meso-level perspectives in bioethics: Institutional interventions for ethical and equitable biomedical research

Abstract: Bioethics research regarding the ethical conduct and impact of research tends to focus on individual-level (micro) or systems-level (macro) factors and constraints. The micro perspective examines the role of researchers' training and mentorship experience, personality, and beliefs in shaping decisions in research, whereas the macro perspective examines the role of rules, regulations, and societal structures. We argue that this yields an incomplete picture of the scientific ecosystem in which researchers operate. For example, funding requirements, resource constraints, and disciplinary norms also shape the ethical conduct and impact of research but are often overlooked in the focus on micro- or macro-level perspectives. Therefore, this panel will leverage meso-level perspectives to assess the ethical conduct and impact of research in biomedicine.

The first panelist will share conceptual tools for identifying and analyzing meso-level influences in shaping partnerships among research institutions and communities, and present findings from an ongoing study that illustrate institutional constraints and facilitators to equity in global genomics research. The second panelist will share lessons from implementing an ethical reflection process integrated into grantmaking for biomedical AI research. They will examine the influence of various actors within grantmaking, research teams' disciplinary norms, and resource constraints on the identification and mitigation of ethical issues during research development. The third panelist will examine the critical role of research infrastructures (including cloud-mediated data sharing, genetic variation datasets, and innovations such as the Human Pangenome Reference) in framing the kinds of concerns that are, or are not, regarded as matters of ethics and equity.

Keywords: institutional interventions for research ethics, equity in genomics research