It has been over a month since my last post and although a lot of work on the “Early Childhood Development for Maternal Mental Health” study –now rechristened the “Maternal Mental Health and Early Childhood Development in Kawempe” study–there is little observable progress to share. I’m stuck in IRB limbo: I am just a few days away from hitting the submit button on my local IRB application after which there will follow more weeks of waiting. The tricky thing about Institutional Review Boards is that they only meet once or twice a month, so if you miss the date, you will have added two to four weeks of NOT collecting data.
Part of me is frustrated by the slow progress, and the image of a duck seemingly calmly floating on the surface of the water while feverishly paddling their feet below comes to mind. The trainee in me, though, is learning that this is all just part of the “fun” of global health research. We think of research as data collection but, in reality, so much of the work of being a researcher is what happens before you get into the field. The field work is the reward for having made it through all the obstacles.
This is the second study I’ve conducted in Uganda. Having been through the IRB process once before makes this time slightly less frantic. One of the pro tips I’ve learned along my career is, whatever process you undertake, to leave breadcrumbs for your future-you. It’s unlikely that you will do that process only once. Although meta documentation (the qualitative research folks call this “memo-ing”) can be a pain, your future-you will thank you for not having to figure that process out for a second time. What is somewhat new for me is the dual-IRB process: having to simultaneously apply to both local (Uganda) and home (Washington University in St Louis) institutions. What there is to look forward to after finally submitting my local IRB application this week is to go through the same-but-different process at Wash U, with the hope that any feedback is at least consistent between the two institutions. But it’s not all grim, while the IRBs are reviewing, I plan to start pilot testing my instruments. Over a year’s worth of effort finally coming to fruition – the golden (duck) egg!