Research Methods and Ethics in Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management: The Result of the Kobe Expert Meeting

In October 2018, at Asia Pacific Conference for Disaster Medicine (APCDM), an expert meeting to identify key research needs was organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) Centre for Health Development (WHO Kobe Centre (WKC)), convening the leading experts from Asia Pacific region, WHO, WHO Thematic Platform for Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (Health-EDRM) Research Network (TPRN), World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM), in collaboration with Asia Pacific Conference for Disaster Medicine (APCDM) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). International experts, who were pre-informed about the meeting, contributed experience-based priority issues in Health-EDRM research, ethics, and scientific publication. Two moderators, experienced in multi-disciplinary research interacted with discussants to transcribe practical issues into related methodological and ethical issues. Each issue was addressed in order to progress research and scientific evidence in Health-EDRM. Further analysis of interactive dialogues revealed priorities for action, proposed mechanism to address these and identified recommendations. Thematic discussion uncovered five priority areas: (1) the need to harmonize Health-EDRM research with universal terms and, definitions via a glossary; (2) mechanisms to facilitate and speed up ethical review process; (3) increased community participation and stakeholder involvement in generating research ideas and in assessing impact evaluation; (4) development of reference materials such as possible consensus statements; and (5) the urgent need for a research methods resource textbook for Health-EDRM addressing these issues.