Getting Credit for CITI Training at a Previous Institution

All investigators conducting human subjects research at the University of Iowa (UI) or at the Iowa City VA Health Care System (VAHCS) are required to complete an education program and become "certified" in human subject protections through the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) program. Many investigators will come to the UI having previously completed some form of CITI training.  

Each institution establishes modules that meet their requirements for certification. Because the training modules in the CITI online course are institution-specific, the University of Iowa cannot simply accept a CITI completion certificate from another institution. However, if a researcher has completed modules that are also a part of the UI training requirement, they can receive credit for them.   

To receive credit for previous modules and complete the University of Iowa CITI course modules, the investigator will need to update their CITI program profile to affiliate with the UI. To affiliate with the UI, in the ‘Select Your Organization Affiliation’ section, type in ‘University of Iowa.’ Please see the complete CITI instructions: How to add/change your affiliated institution or transfer completions.   

The University of Iowa requires the following modules for human subjects protection training.   

For IRB-01 Biomedical, the required modules are:  

For IRB-02 Social & Behavioral, the required modules are:  

Researchers typically complete Group 1 (biomedical) or Group 2 (social/behavioral) training based on the college or department in which they conduct research. Regardless of their college or department, researchers conducting biomedical research (i.e. specimen collection, new drug applications, etc.) should complete the Group 1 training.  

Researchers who completed human subjects protection training at a previous institution and have affiliated with the UI, once enrolled in the course (IRB-01 or IRB-02), the CITI program will indicate which UI-required modules are incomplete. Once the researcher completes these modules, the CITI Program will notify the UI IRB that training is complete, and we will manually add the researcher to the Certified Investigator database in HawkIRB.  

Additional information about completing the UI CITI training is available on the HSO website: Human Subjects Protection Training from Another Institution and the UI CITI User’s Guide on the HSO website for step-by-step instructions. If you have any questions regarding this process, please contact us at irb-outreach@uiowa.edu.