Societal Paper Conflict of Interest Submission

Please read and then submit your disclosure.

Financial Conflict of Interest:  In order to preserve the society’s integrity, while balancing unnecessary restrictions on participation in societal papers, NASPGHAN has developed the following requirements on disclosure of potential conflict of interest.

a)       All financial and other relationships of the writing group members with an affected company in the past 12 months, shall be disclosed to NASPGHAN at the time of submission of the proposal and yearly thereafter for the duration of the workgroup activities. An affected company is defined as a commercial entity with a reasonable likelihood of experiencing a direct or indirect regulatory or fiscal impact as the result of a NASPGHAN-sponsored guideline or recommendation.

b)      No NASPGHAN member of the writing group, nor their immediate family members, shall have a financial relationship in excess of $5000 USD with an affected company (as outlined in Section 6 a) that requires disclosure. Financial relationships include employment, ownership, speaking fees, honoraria, consulting fees, or any other direct payments to the writing group member or their immediate family (spouse and dependent children). This does not include investment vehicles such as mutual funds where the member or family has no control over the selection of the holdings, or research grants in any amount paid to the writing group member’s institution, although research grants should still be disclosed.

c)       All members of the writing group agree to not accept new speaking engagements or consulting arrangements for which an honorarium is paid by an affected company (or a direct intermediary) with interest pertinent to the scope of the societal paper, during the writing group activities until 12 months after manuscript publication date.

d)      If one is unsure what constitutes an affected company, or a prohibitive financial relationship, or if non-financial ties may be perceived as problematic, the member’s disclosures should be reviewed by the NASPGHAN Ethics Committee.

e)      Although the preference for NASPGHAN is that no member has a financial conflict of interest above $5000 USD in a 12 month period, in certain circumstances a Writing Group may not be able to perform its work without members who have conflicts of interest. In that case, the Ethics Committee will be consulted about appropriateness of inclusion of this member and suggest a management plan for the conflict of interest. NASPGHAN retains the right to deny appointment to the Writing Group in such cases. The Lead of the Writing Group, should never have a prohibitive financial relationship with an affected company.

f)        Disclosures require Writing Group members to certify that they have reviewed and disclosed relevant information (i.e. previous twelve months) reported on their most recent CMS.gov Open Payments Report.

g)       Conflict of interest disclosures of all members of the writing group including the Lead must be submitted at time of proposal submission to the CCQ committee, and annually thereafter until one year after publication date.  Changes in COI, should be reported within 30 days to the CCQ committee. Members of CCQ should recuse themselves from any discussion or decisions about development of societal papers if they have financial conflicts. (https://naspghan.org/professional-resources/clinical-guidelines/)

h)      Funders should have no role in guidelines development.

i)        Writing Group Leads should start every meeting with a disclosure of all members financial and other relationships with affected companies and any management plans.

Also see NASPGHAN COI Policy: (www.naspghan.org/files/documents/pdfs/policies/Final%20COI.pdf)