Public Health Ethics: Practical Approaches for Ethical and Equitable Public Health Practice
Abstract
State and local public health officials regularly have to balance competing ethical, legal, and professional obligations. Common challenges include fair allocation of scarce resources, respecting individual rights while safeguarding the public’s health, protecting underserved and marginalized communities while engaging and sharing information in a transparent way, and ensuring confidentiality and privacy. Competence in identifying ethical issues, analyzing ethical conflicts, and developing reasonable options for resolving ethical tensions is an important part of public health practice. Public health ethics provides a theoretical basis and practical framework for evaluating, prioritizing, and weighing these interests and values and sometimes negotiating compromises between them.
The field of public health ethics is unique in that, unlike the patient focus of clinical ethics or the bioethical focus on individual autonomy, public health ethics explores ethical issues that arise at the population level. This population focus for the common good raises special ethical challenges, such as how to work across sectors, engage communities, and incorporate a variety of stakeholder values and interests in making decisions.
Establishing ethics infrastructure and developing staff competence for ethical analysis can improve public health decision-making, provide justification for public health actions, assist with building public trust, and promote equitable health outcomes.
This workshop will orient participants to the field of public health ethics and explore the variety of practical public health ethics tools and frameworks. Participants will have the opportunity to practice ethical analysis skills through case studies reflecting actual ethical issues faced by local health departments.
Keywords
Ethics, Ethical, Equity, Decision-Making, Trust, Law, Infrastructure
Public Health Ethics: Practical Approaches for Ethical and Equitable Public Health Practice
State and local public health officials regularly have to balance competing ethical, legal, and professional obligations. Common challenges include fair allocation of scarce resources, respecting individual rights while safeguarding the public’s health, protecting underserved and marginalized communities while engaging and sharing information in a transparent way, and ensuring confidentiality and privacy. Competence in identifying ethical issues, analyzing ethical conflicts, and developing reasonable options for resolving ethical tensions is an important part of public health practice. Public health ethics provides a theoretical basis and practical framework for evaluating, prioritizing, and weighing these interests and values and sometimes negotiating compromises between them.
The field of public health ethics is unique in that, unlike the patient focus of clinical ethics or the bioethical focus on individual autonomy, public health ethics explores ethical issues that arise at the population level. This population focus for the common good raises special ethical challenges, such as how to work across sectors, engage communities, and incorporate a variety of stakeholder values and interests in making decisions.
Establishing ethics infrastructure and developing staff competence for ethical analysis can improve public health decision-making, provide justification for public health actions, assist with building public trust, and promote equitable health outcomes.
This workshop will orient participants to the field of public health ethics and explore the variety of practical public health ethics tools and frameworks. Participants will have the opportunity to practice ethical analysis skills through case studies reflecting actual ethical issues faced by local health departments.
