The annual disclosure period — where all faculty, certain staff and trainees report outside professional activities and financial interests to assure they don’t conflict with their  University responsibilities — begins on March 15 for Pitt and dual Pitt-UPMC employees, with disclosure forms due by April 15, 2021.

Those required to complete a disclosure will receive an email from MyDisclosures, a new conflicts disclosure system that Pitt piloted last year. Supervisors should complete their reviews by June 15, 2021.

The new MyDisclosures system will automatically populate the form for this year with is any information entered last year. Most University members can simply login to verify their responses, make necessary updates and submit their disclosure.

Based on feedback from the pilot, several enhancements were made:

• Providing more help text and guidance

• Improving wording of some questions

• Adding new questions to aid investigators in making required disclosures to funding agencies 

• Adding a Supervisor Center, where all disclosure forms requiring review are consolidated

• Identifying mandatory disclosers more accurately

Training sessions for disclosers, with helpful tips on what to include, will be held throughout March. Online registration is open. Step-by-step instructions on how to complete an annual disclosure and what to include are available on the Conflict of Interest website.

New sessions for supervisors to outline their role in the review process and learn about new features in the MyDisclosures system are provided, too. All supervisors are strongly encouraged to register for one of these sessions.

Training sessions for supervisors will be approximately 30 minutes long and will include a question-and-answer session.

Supervisor training will include the following topics:

• The University's conflict of interest and conflict of commitment policies.

• Management of conflict of interest and conflict of commitment.

• Disclosures required for outside engagements in addition to those in MyDisclosures.

For questions about these training sessions send an email to: vcorp@pitt.edu.