Monday, April 22, 2013

The Alaska Area Specimen Bank: a tribal-federal partnership to maintain and manage a resource for health research

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23599909


 2013 Apr 16;72. doi: 10.3402/ijch.v72i0.20607. Print 2013.

The Alaska Area Specimen Bank: a tribal-federal partnership to maintain and manage a resource for health research.

Source

Arctic Investigations Program, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Anchorage, USA.

Abstract

Banked biospecimens from a defined population are a valuable resource that can be used to assess early markers for illness or to determine the prevalence of a disease to aid the development of intervention strategies to reduce morbidity and mortality. The Alaska Area Specimen Bank (AASB) currently contains 266,353 residual biologic specimens (serum, plasma, whole blood, tissue, bacterial cultures) from 83,841 persons who participated in research studies, public health investigations and clinical testing conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service and Alaska Native tribal health organisations dating back to 1961. The majority (95.7%) are serum specimens, 77% were collected between 1981 and 1994 and 85% were collected from Alaska Native people. Oversight of the specimen bank is provided by a working group with representation from tribal, state and federal health organisations, the Alaska Area IRB and a specimen bank committee which ensures the specimens are used in accordance with policies and procedures developed by the working group.

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