Community Advisory Board (CAB)

The Mayo Clinic Biobank CAB is composed of approximately 20 members chosen to reflect the diversity of community interests and backgrounds. Several of these members participated in the Biobank's Deliberative Community Engagement event.

The purpose of the CAB is to ensure that the community's voice is heard in shaping the current and future plans and maintenance of the Mayo Clinic Biobank.

Members elect a community representative who co-chairs the board with a Mayo Clinic co-chair — a member of the Mayo Clinic Program in Professionalism and Ethics staff. The Mayo Clinic co-chair attends all CAB meetings and updates BTOG on the board's progress and recommendations. The community member co-chair attends BTOG meetings and facilitates CAB meetings when appropriate.

In 2008, CAB members met with Mayo Clinic Biobank staff members to assist in creating the Biobank's informed consent procedures and review recruitment materials and methods. Many of the improvements and suggestions generated by the CAB were adopted by the Mayo Clinic Biobank before it began operations in April 2009.

Since then, BTOG has asked the CAB to review and recommend policies and procedures on issues arising in Biobank research, such as return of research results, data sharing with other researchers, procedures used to recruit Biobank donors and many other topics. The CAB meets every other month.

The following are listings of previous and future CAB meeting dates and agenda topics. For detailed summaries from previous meetings, please see the CAB columns in the BioNews newsletters.

• November 1, 2012 — Use of the Biobank as a recruitment tool
• July 12, 2012 — Review and discussion of the RIGHT protocol study materials; overview of institutional review board process
• May 8, 2012 — Focus-group format to obtain feedback about the a CIM pharmacogenomics medical records study (named the RIGHT Protocol)
• March 1, 2012 — National developments and discussions of ethical issues in genetics
• January 26, 2012 — Five-year plan update; whole exome sequencing background; whole exome sequencing clinical issues

The 2013 CAB meeting schedule is:

• Jan. 24
• March 16
• May 2
• July 11
• Sept. 5
• Nov. 7