Faculty & Staff
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Khama Mita |
Khama Mita, a native of Malawi, is a visiting scholar who comes to Michigan State University’s (MSU) Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences (CEHLS) from the University of North Carolina Project in Malawi. She is the sole third-year trainee to join us as part of a four-year research and bioethics training program, "International Training for Scholarship in Research Ethics," funded by the Fogarty International Center of the US National Institutes of Health. This program represents a partnership between CEHLS at Michigan State University and the University of Malawi College of Medicine. As a visiting scholar and trainee, Khama is engaged in various relevant activities including attending MSU research ethics classes and sitting as a shadow reviewer on the University's Institutional Review Board.
Khama earned a B.Sc. in Biology and Demography from Chancellor College, University of Malawi. As the Institutional Review Board Officer at the University of North Carolina Project (one of the major biomedical research projects in Malawi), her key responsibilities include pre-screening of health research protocols for ethics before their submission to the institutional review board; maintenance of regulatory documents for the vast studies been carried out at the site; and quality assurance and quality control in the studies. She was a member of the committee exploring the formulation of the Malawi Bioethics Policy. She has had training in Good Clinical Practices and is also responsible for the training of staff in Good Clinical Practices.
Research Interests:
As an Institutional Review Board Officer her interests mainly lie in biomedical research. She has a major interest in ensuring that studies are conducted ethically and this includes having true informed consent as well as looking at non-coercive compensation/incentives for research participants. She has a passion to see the introduction of ethics/institutional review boards in all constituent colleges of the University of Malawi so that it is not only biomedical research that is being regulated but rather all human research.
