An Overview of Conceptual Foundations, Ethical Tensions, and Ethical Frameworks in Public Health

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-11
Author(s):  
Andrew W. Siegel ◽  
Maria W. Merritt
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Ethical Frameworks ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Side Constraints ◽  
Conceptual Foundations

The field of public health ethics has plural foundations in major normative ethical theories, principally consequentialism and deontology, and in ethical concepts such as social justice and human rights. This overview provides some basic background on ethical theory and introduces chapters in the related section of The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics. The four chapters together elucidate the moral foundations of public health ethics. One chapter characterizes public health and describes the ethical challenges raised by its distinctive characteristics, while the next examines the ways in which public health interventions may be morally justifiable. The following two chapters focus, respectively, on justice and human rights, considering the operation of each not only as moral foundations, but also as side constraints in frameworks of public health ethics.

An Overview of the Ethics of Injury in Public Health

2019 ◽  
pp. 597-603
Author(s):  
Adnan A. Hyder
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Injury Prevention ◽  
Prevention And Control ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Prompt Attention ◽  
And Control

This chapter briefly introduces ethics issues in injury prevention and control in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), using a series of examples that prompt attention to the ethical principles of autonomy and justice. The chapter also introduces the section of The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics dedicated to an examination of injury and public health ethics, with attention given to the complex ethical challenges arising in injury prevention and control in LMICs. The section’s two chapters discuss public health ethics issues arising in the prevention and control of unintentional injuries and intentional injuries, respectively. Those chapters define a set of ethics issues within international injury work and provide an initial analysis of the nature of those ethics issues, their specificity, and potential pathways for addressing them.

Human Rights and Public Health Ethics

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-56
Author(s):  
S. Matthew Liao
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Moral Justification ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Basic Health ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
The Right

This chapter relates human rights to public health ethics and policies by discussing the nature and moral justification of human rights generally, and the right to health in particular. Which features of humanity ground human rights? To answer this question, as an alternative to agency and capabilities approaches, the chapter offers the “fundamental conditions approach,” according to which human rights protect the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life. The fundamental conditions approach identifies “basic health”—the adequate functioning of the various parts of our organism needed for the development and exercise of the fundamental capacities—as the object of a human right. A human right to basic health entails human rights to the essential resources for promoting and maintaining basic health, including adequate nutrition, basic health care, and basic education. Dutybearers include every able person in appropriate circumstances, as well as governments and government agencies, private philanthropic foundations, and transnational corporations.

Public Health Ethics Theory: Review and Path to Convergence

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Chronic Conditions ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Clinical Model ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
Public Health Practitioners ◽  
Ethical Tools ◽  
Theory Review

For over 100 years, the field of contemporary public health has existed to improve the health of communities and populations. As public health practitioners conduct their work – be it focused on preventing transmission of infectious diseases, or prevention of injury, or prevention of and cures for chronic conditions – ethical dimensions arise. Borrowing heavily from the ethical tools developed for research ethics and bioethics, the nascent field of public health ethics soon began to feel the limits of the clinical model and began creating different frameworks to guide its ethical challenges. Several public health ethics frameworks have been introduced since the late 1990s, ranging from extensions of principle-based models to human rights and social justice perspectives to those based on political philosophy. None has coalesced as the framework of choice in the discipline of public health. This paper examines several of the most-known frameworks of public health ethics for their common theoretical underpinnings and values, and suggests next steps toward the formulation of a single framework.

Ein vier-Prinzipien-Ansatz für die Bioethik

2007 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 182-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Schröder
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Personal Relations

Abstract The four-principles-approach of Tom Beauchamp and Jim Childress has been very influential in bioethics in the last decades. It has proven well although mid-level principles in general and this approach in particular are highly contested by ethicists who would prefer approaches rather based on rules, virtues or personal relations. The author of this study systematically discusses the origin, method and criticism of the Beauchamp and Childress approach. Finally he argues that the applicability of this approach for ethical challenges in the biomedical setting should stimulate a principled approach for ethical challenges of public health as well. Such an approach can utilize the method from Beauchamp and Childress. Principles for public health ethics, as presented in a concise set by the author, however, must be different in scope and content to meet the ethical challenges of public health

scholarly journals Looking Ahead: Addressing Ethical Challenges in Public Health Practice

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-667 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy M. Baum ◽  
Sarah E. Gollust ◽  
Susan D. Goold ◽  
Peter D. Jacobson
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Code Of Ethics ◽  
Public Health Practice ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Public Health Professionals ◽  
Global Health Ethics

In recent years, scholars have begun to lay the groundwork to justify a distinct application of ethics to the field of public health. They have highlighted important features that differentiate public health ethics from bioethics, especially public health’s emphasis on population health rather than issues of individual health. Articulations of public health ethics also tend to emphasize the role of social justice compared to the predominance of autonomy in the bioethical literature. Now that the field of public health ethics is developing a unique focus and a language of its own, including a code of ethics disseminated by the American Public Health Association, the future of public health ethics may well be global health ethics, focusing on issues of global justice. As public health ethics evolves from its nascent stage of reflection to a place of action and application in the national and global arenas, two interrelated developments will need to occur: (1) public health professionals, including practitioners, policymakers, and scholars, will need a richer understanding of the ethical challenges practitioners face on a daily basis and (2) scholars will need to develop useful tools (i.e., frameworks) that practitioners may employ for identifying and tackling these ethical challenges.

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