Clinical Trials Overview
Healthy Volunteers
Many participants enroll in clinical studies to improve their own health, but healthy volunteers are hoping to help medical science understand more about the causes, progress, and treatment of disease. Healthy volunteers provide important medical information to researchers by helping them compare how healthy people differ medically from those who have a certain disease. Healthy volunteers must meet certain requirements, which are different for each study.
What is the Clinical Research Volunteer Program (CRVP)?
Provides an opportunity for healthy volunteers--local, national, and international--to participate in medical research studies (sometimes called protocols or trials). Healthy volunteers provide researchers with important information for comparison with people who have specific illnesses. Every year, nearly 3,500 healthy volunteers participate in studies at NIH.
Information for Healthy Volunteers
There are about 300 studies available to healthy volunteers. You can find information on these studies at Search the Studies. (To search for studies accepting healthy volunteers, type in the keywords: “healthy” and “normal”.)
More information about the Clinical Research Volunteer Program is available at Program for Healthy Volunteers.
Compensation for Healthy Volunteers
NIH compensates volunteers for their time and, in some cases, for the inconvenience of a procedure. There are standard compensation rates for the volunteer's time; the study's principal investigator determines inconvenience rates.
How to Volunteer
Call 1-800-892-3276 (toll-free) or 301-496-4763 to talk to a staff member. You will need to come to the CRVP office at NIH in Bethesda, Md., to register for participation in a study.
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