By Natalie Harold, Education and Resource Manager
As the nation’s leading advocacy organization for people with limb loss and limb difference, the Amputee Coalition is committed to providing support, education, and advocacy for our community members. We understand that scientific research plays an important role in improving the lives of those affected by limb loss and limb difference. Therefore, we continually seek ways in which we can achieve the following:
- Facilitate the engagement of our community members in clinical research through our published list of approved volunteer research opportunities. We seek to promote only high-quality clinical research that is focused on issues that are important and relevant to the limb loss and limb difference community.
- Create research partnerships that address the needs of and center the voices of our community members. We prioritize our research involvement in projects that will produce the evidence needed to optimize functional outcomes, improve quality of care, and increase access to medically necessary treatments and prosthetic technology.
- Promote our research priorities, curated from the feedback of our community members and experts within our field to be pursued by researchers from across the research landscape.
For Community Members: If you are an individual with limb loss or limb difference and you would like to participate in ongoing clinical research opportunities, please visit our webpage for Volunteer Research Opportunities. This page contains a list of current research studies that have been approved by the Amputee Coalition and Scientific and Medical Advisory Committee (SciMAC) based on their alignment with our research priorities. The projects on this page have completed the necessary documentation to assure human subject protocols were reviewed by an Institutional Review Board or Ethics Committee and that there are no commercial conflicts of interest.
For Researchers: If you are a researcher interested in entering a Research Partnership Agreement with the Amputee Coalition or promoting your research study on our Volunteer Research Opportunity webpage, please refer to the instructions listed on our Information for Researchers webpage or contact us at research@amputee-coalition.org for more information.