WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs today announced that it has accredited four more research organizations, including its first organizations in Africa and South America.	 	The newly accredited organizations are:	

		Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

		Sociedade Beneficente Israelita Brasileira Albert Einstein, São Paulo, Brazil

		TREAD Research, Cape Town, South Africa

		Valley Health System, Ridgewood, New Jersey

	“Even more important, however, is what these accreditations mean to the global research community,” she added. “In the U.S. and overseas, more and more organizations are committing to AAHRPP’s standards for research ethics, quality and safety. That’s good news for research participants, researchers, sponsors and all who ultimately will benefit from the discoveries that research makes possible.”	ï¿¼	“Each of these accreditations represents a ‘first’ for us,” AAHRPP President and CEO Elyse I. Summers said. “Today we enthusiastically add great geographic and substantive diversity to our family of AAHRPP-accredited organizations, with our first organizations on the continents of Africa and South America, our first organization that focuses on traditional Chinese medicine	and, believe it or not, our first accreditation in the state of New Jersey.	 	To date, 231 organizations have earned AAHRPP accreditation. Of these, 35 are located outside the United States.	 	To earn AAHRPP accreditation, organizations must demonstrate that they have built extensive safeguards into every level of their research operation and that they adhere to high standards for research. In today’s global, collaborative research enterprise, organizations increasingly rely on AAHRPP accreditation status to help identify trusted research partners.	 	AAHRPP has accredited organizations in 47 states, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan and Thailand.All major U.S. independent institutional review boards have earned AAHRPP accreditation. In addition, more than 60 percent of U.S. research-intensive universities and over 65 percent of	U.S. medical schools are either AAHRPP accredited or have begun the accreditation process. The National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest public funder of research, has earned accreditation, as has Pfizer, Inc., the largest industry sponsor of clinical research.	 	

	A nonprofit organization, AAHRPP provides accreditation for organizations that conduct or review human research and can demonstrate that their protections exceed the safeguards required by the U.S. government. To learn more, visit 