What are Henry Ford Health’s standard procedures for internal peer review and deciding whether to submit research for external publication?
Executive summary
Henry Ford Health treats internal peer review as a gatekeeper that vets study design, data integrity and ethical compliance before any work is sent to journals or publicly shared, and that process can result in projects being reworked or shelved if reviewers find “fatal flaws” [1] [2]. Institutional rules require prospective Institutional Review Board oversight for human-subjects research and provide library, repository and workflow tools to support rigorous review, but publicly available reporting focuses on a high‑profile discarded draft rather than a complete, codified review manual [3] [4] [5].
1. What the internal review checks for and who does it
Henry Ford Health’s internal review system foregrounds scientific validity, methodology and ethics: draft work involving human subjects must undergo IRB review before investigational or observational studies proceed, ensuring consent and protections are in place [3]. Beyond IRB clearance, the organization uses institutional resources — library guides, systematic‑review platforms and scholarly repositories — to support literature, methods and data management during manuscript development [6] [5] [7]. Reporting on a criticized 2020 draft shows senior leaders and subject‑matter experts taking part in early internal critique, with executives publicly describing problems identified by internal reviewers as “fatal flaws” in design and data that made conclusions meaningless [1] [2].
2. Criteria that determine whether a paper is submitted externally
Decisions to submit to journals hinge on demonstrable methodological soundness, reproducible data and ethical clearance; Henry Ford Health’s public statements emphasize that studies failing those tests will not be sent to journals or released publicly [1]. When reviewers flag major concerns, leadership says researchers typically have two paths: reconstruct the study framework so it meets scientific standards and then pursue submission, or abandon the project entirely — a choice Henry Ford officials invoked about the discarded vaccine‑comparison draft [2]. The institution also curates and documents publications via its Scholarly Commons and periodic publication lists, indicating which work was formally accepted and deposited after peer review [4] [8].
3. Workflow, documentation and institutional supports
Operationally, Henry Ford Health appears to rely on documented tools and audits — from credentialing and peer‑review forms to the Sladen Library’s guides and organizational subscriptions like Covidence — to standardize review steps, track literature searches and archive outputs [9] [6] [5]. The Scholarly Commons serves as an institutional repository for deposited, accepted work, suggesting an administrative path from internal vetting to external publication and institutional archiving [4]. Public materials note that the library and quality guides are maintained for staff use, but do not publish a public step‑by‑step internal peer‑review policy in the sources provided [7].
4. How Henry Ford Health handles problematic or disputed drafts
In high‑visibility cases, Henry Ford Health leaders have publicly disavowed drafts that did not survive internal review and warned third parties against circulating “fatally flawed” analyses; they framed their action as protecting scientific integrity and public health rather than suppressing results for political reasons [1] [2]. That stance is corroborated by fact‑checking outlets that reported internal reviewers identified mismatches in comparison groups and methodological defects that made the draft’s conclusions invalid [10]. Alternative viewpoints exist — critics allege institutional suppression — but Henry Ford’s documented responses and the reporting cited attribute non‑publication to methodological failure, not a policy of political suppression [1] [2] [10].
5. Limits of the public record and what remains unclear
The publicly available materials confirm IRB requirements, the existence of library and repository supports, and leadership assertions about internal critique in a notable case, but they do not provide a single, public, detailed internal‑peer‑review checklist, nor do they disclose the full reviewer reports or the formal governance charter that prescribes exactly who signs off before external submission [3] [4] [2]. Reporting therefore supports a general model — institutional methodological and ethical vetting, use of research tools and either revise‑and‑resubmit or abandon outcomes — but cannot, from the sources provided, enumerate every procedural step, committee membership rule or escalation path used across all departments [6] [7].