This comment concerns me. I would have thought the community health team would never give input on a grant, only interact with funding bodies if there were red flags about an organisation that was either doing funding or getting funded. What kind of “helpful” advice have they given you?
The main way they give input on our grants is by reporting concerns about things we are interested in funding (e.g. red flags “a few people have reported this person making them feel uncomfortable so we’d advise against them doing in-person community building” as I said in my original comment). It sounds to me like we’re aligned on the kind of input com health might be well-placed to give.
Re your example COIs
Hmm, I am a bit confused about which way this goes. Re (1), I could imagine someone having that concern. I don’t think com health staff give us this kind of input so I’m not worried about it in practice but, I could imagine a grantee being worried about this.
Re (2), we don’t pay any of the advisors from com health but I could see a COI if com health team members believed that their reputation was tied to our organisation in some way.
I think that both of these potential COIs are pretty weak (but thank you for flagging them), but I’ll have a think about ways in which we might be able to further mitigate them.
I was interpreting your comment that they had separate advisory roles for orgs like yours outside of the community health sphere, which would be much more problematic.
If their advisory role is around community health issues that makes more sense, It still is a potentially problematic COI, as there is potential to breach confidentiality in that role. For example hope they have permission to share info like “we would advise against them doing in-person community building”, from the people who gave them that info. By default everything shared with community health should (I imagine) be confidential unless the person who shares it explicitly gives permission to pass the info on.
but I agree with you its not as much of a concern, although it requires some care.
**Just quickly responding to a few points **
The main way they give input on our grants is by reporting concerns about things we are interested in funding (e.g. red flags “a few people have reported this person making them feel uncomfortable so we’d advise against them doing in-person community building” as I said in my original comment). It sounds to me like we’re aligned on the kind of input com health might be well-placed to give.
Re your example COIs
Hmm, I am a bit confused about which way this goes. Re (1), I could imagine someone having that concern. I don’t think com health staff give us this kind of input so I’m not worried about it in practice but, I could imagine a grantee being worried about this.
Re (2), we don’t pay any of the advisors from com health but I could see a COI if com health team members believed that their reputation was tied to our organisation in some way.
I think that both of these potential COIs are pretty weak (but thank you for flagging them), but I’ll have a think about ways in which we might be able to further mitigate them.
Thanks for the reply
I was interpreting your comment that they had separate advisory roles for orgs like yours outside of the community health sphere, which would be much more problematic.
If their advisory role is around community health issues that makes more sense, It still is a potentially problematic COI, as there is potential to breach confidentiality in that role. For example hope they have permission to share info like “we would advise against them doing in-person community building”, from the people who gave them that info. By default everything shared with community health should (I imagine) be confidential unless the person who shares it explicitly gives permission to pass the info on.
but I agree with you its not as much of a concern, although it requires some care.