If you conduct externally sponsored research and you, your spouse/domestic partner or dependent children have a significant financial interest that could impact, or be impacted by, your research, then you must comply with UNH’s policies on financial conflict of interest in research (FCOIR).  For example, if you have an ownership stake in a company and your externally-funded research could benefit the company, this is a financial conflict of interest in research.

UNH has a FCOIR program to protect the integrity of externally-sponsored research and to comply with federal regulations.   The purpose of the program is to identify and eliminate or manage any possible threat to research objectivity at UNH and, where conflicts could affect the rights and welfare of human subjects in research, to identify and eliminate or manage the conflicts that could lead to the unethical treatment of research subjects.  The main components of the program are:

• Disclosure of investigators' financial interests that might be affected by the research at the time of proposal submission (forms and instructions available here);
• Review of disclosures by the UNH Disclosure Review Committee (DRC); 
• Where applicable, development of a management plan (plan template available here) to minimize or eliminate the risks associated with any interests that qualify as significant;
• Oversight and monitoring of compliance with management plans; and
• Periodic review of management plans and reporting to the DRC.

UNH has two FCOIR research policies: One policy applies to research funded, or proposed for funding, by the Public Health Service (PHS) and other organizations that require compliance with the PHS FCOIR regulations; the other policy applies to investigators receiving funding from any other external organization. 

Please contact Julie Simpson (x2-2003 or julie.simpson@unh.edu) or Tammy Goldberg (x2-1948 or tammy.goldberg@unh.edu) with any questions about UNH’s FCOIR program or visit http://www.unh.edu/research/conflicts-interest-commitment.