The Participant Council brings together healthy research volunteers from around the world to share advice, lived experience, and perspectives on trial participation.
The Council meets online three to four times a year. Council members may also take part in additional engagement and capacity-building opportunities.
Find out more in the Participant Council Terms of Reference.
Why is the Participant Council important?
The Council serves as a forum to strengthen participant-centered thinking, inform study design and ethics, and guide advocacy. In this way, it furthers 1Day Sooner’s mission to support people who want to participate in high-impact medical studies and to advance efficient, equitable, life-saving medical research that reduces global suffering from infectious diseases.
What is the Council focusing on?
Measuring Social Impact
Focus session for the Council’s January 2026 meeting. Exploring how healthy research participants think about the purpose and broader effects of joining medical studies, and how their perspectives can help better describe these wider impacts for future trials. Read the meeting notes.
Global Ethics Charter for the Protection of Healthy Volunteers
Focus session of the Council’s April 2026 meeting. Discussing which parts of the Charter seem most important, and which ones raise the greatest concerns, as well as exploring what fair and practical implementation could look like for a small number of selected articles.
Read the meeting notes and the Council’s recommendations on practical implementation of Charter Articles 3 (representation) and 13 (financial compensation).
Participant Compensation
Focus session of the Council’s July 2026 meeting. Discussing what makes participant compensation fair, how it should be determined, and which principles and benchmarks should guide it.
Read the meeting notes.
Council members are compensated for Council meeting attendance, reflecting our commitment to fair compensation for healthy research volunteers.
Participant Council Members
The Council currently has 15 members from 8 countries, representing a range of backgrounds and experiences.
| Name | Country |
| Angelique Mseteka | Malawi |
| Carolina Reid | United States |
| Chisomo Billiat | Malawi |
| Edgar Nyakoojo | Uganda |
| Elizabeth Rouha | Czech Republic |
| Jacob Hopkins | United Kingdom |
| Julius Hege | Germany |
| Keller Scholl | United States |
| Lehua Gray | United States |
| Marcus Dahl | Australia |
| Mphatso Maliro | Malawi |
| Pepijn Hoogeslag | Netherlands |
| Roopesh Chavda | United Kingdom |
| Tabitha Kisakye | Uganda |
| Thomas Smiley | United States |
Interested in joining the Participant Council?
Council members are recruited through calls for expressions of interest, typically twice a year. To be notified when the next recruitment window opens, contact us at volunteer@1daysooner.org.