An Overview of Ethics and Environmental Health

2019 ◽  
pp. 697-703
Author(s):  
David B. Resnik
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Environmental Health ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Biomedical Ethics ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Social Utility ◽  
Toxic Substances ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Wide Range

This chapter provides an overview of the ethics of environmental health, and it introduces five chapters in the related section of The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics. A wide range of ethical issues arises in managing the relationship between human health and the environment, including regulation of toxic substances, air and water pollution, waste management, agriculture, the built environment, occupational health, energy production and use, environmental justice, population control, and climate change. The values at stake in environmental health ethics include those usually mentioned in ethical debates in biomedicine and public health, such as autonomy, social utility, and justice, as well as values that address environmental concerns, such as animal welfare, stewardship of biological resources, and sustainability. Environmental health ethics, therefore, stands at the crossroads of several disciplines, including public health ethics, environmental ethics, biomedical ethics, and business ethics.

scholarly journals The Ethics of Tobacco Harm Reduction: An Analysis of E-Cigarette Availability From the Perspectives of Utilitarianism, Bioethics, and Public Health Ethics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Thomas ◽  
Lisa S Parker ◽  
Saul Shiffman
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Harm Reduction ◽  
Biomedical Ethics ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Tobacco Harm Reduction ◽  
Reduction Strategy ◽  
Ethics Framework ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Harm Reduction Strategy

Abstract Much evidence suggests e-cigarettes are substantially less harmful than combustible cigarettes. Assuming this is true, we analyze the ethical case for a policy of e-cigarette availability (ECA) as a tobacco harm reduction strategy. ECA involves making e-cigarettes available to allow smokers to switch to them, and informing smokers of the lower risks of e-cigarettes vis-à-vis smoking. After suggesting that utilitarian/consequentialist considerations do not provide an adequate ethical analysis, we analyze ECA using two other ethical frameworks. First, ECA is supported by a public health ethics framework. ECA is a population-level intervention consistent with respecting individual autonomy by using the least restrictive means to accomplish public health goals, and it supports equity and justice. Second, ECA is supported by four principles that form a biomedical ethics framework. By reducing smokers’ health risks and not harming them, ECA fulfills principles of beneficence and non-maleficence. Because ECA allows smokers to make informed health decisions for themselves, it fulfills the principle requiring respect for persons and their autonomy. Here, we consider whether nicotine addiction and thus ECA undermine autonomy, and also discuss the ethical warrant for special protections for youth. Finally, ECA can also advance justice by providing a harm reduction alternative for disadvantaged groups that disproportionately bear the devastating consequences of smoking. Policies of differential taxation of cigarettes and e-cigarettes can facilitate adoption of less harmful alternatives by those economically disadvantaged. We conclude that public health and biomedical ethics frameworks are mutually reinforcing and supportive of ECA as a tobacco harm reduction strategy. Implications Making e-cigarettes and information about them available is supported as ethical from multiple ethical perspectives.

An Overview of the Ethics of Health Systems

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-114
Author(s):  
Maria W. Merritt ◽  
Adnan A. Hyder
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Research Ethics ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Health Systems Research ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
System Level ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Systems Research

This chapter relates public health ethics to selected questions regarding health systems ethics and provides overviews of chapters in the section of The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics dedicated to health systems. National and subnational health systems aim chiefly to improve population health. Public health is a collective good whose promotion takes government action, raising ethical issues in stewardship, governance, and accountability. Moral justifications for public health activities, including overall benefit, collective efficiency, distributive fairness, and harm prevention, are considered by way of examining global human resources for health, with an eye to efficiency, equity, rights, and other ethical issues. Worldwide interest in health systems strengthening has boosted investment in health systems research, taking traditional research ethics to the population level in the field of health systems research ethics. The idea of a learning health care system (LHCS) represents a dynamic interface where health care delivery can be continuously improved through systemic data collection undertaken in conjunction with clinical care, posing new system-level ethical opportunities and ethical challenges.

Public Health Ethics: The Voices of Practitioners

2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (S4) ◽  
pp. 104-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Gaare Bernheim
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Ethics Education ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Code Of Ethics ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Public Health Professionals ◽  
New Public Health ◽  
New Public

Public health ethics is emerging as a new field of inquiry, distinct not only from public health law, but also from traditional medical ethics and research ethics. Public health professional and scholarly attention is focusing on ways that ethical analysis and a new public health code of ethics can be a resource for health professionals working in the field. This article provides a preliminary exploration of the ethical issues faced by public health professionals in day-to-day practice and of the type of ethics education and support they believe may be helpful.

scholarly journals Βιοηθική και δημόσια υγεία: από τη δεκαετία 1970 στην πανδημία COVID-19

Bioethica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Aikaterini A Aspradaki
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Public Health Research ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
System Reform ◽  
Global Public Health ◽  
Public Health Genetics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Ethics

The strong relationship between bioethics and public health has been put forward since the early 1970s. The HIV/AIDS epidemic, erupted in the 1980s, serves as a catalyst for the broadening of the bioethics frameworks by the inclusion of ethical issues faced in public health. From the beginning of the 21st century, public health ethics has been emerged as a discipline and has been established as a subfield of bioethics.Topics in public health ethics include, among others, the public health research, the ethics and infectious disease control, the ethics of health promotion and disease prevention, the ethical issues in environmental and occupational health, the public health and health system reform: allocation of resources, access, priority setting, the international collaboration for global public health, the vulnerability and marginalized populations, the public health genetics, the public health genomics. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to constitute an area of conceptual and practical overlapping of all the above-mentioned topics and gives huge boost to research interest for public health bioethics.This paper explains the relationship between bioethics and public health through two time periods and, in particular, the “early” 1970s- 1990s era and the2000s & 2010s that is the period of the emergence and establishment of public health ethics marked, at the end, by the COVID-19 pandemic.

scholarly journals Solidarity as a Regulatory Principle for Digital Technologies Used in the Pandemic Response (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junhewk Kim ◽  
Eun Kyung Choi
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Biomedical Ethics ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Epidemiological Methods ◽  
Technology Application ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Regulatory Principle ◽  
Pandemic Response

UNSTRUCTURED In addition to existing epidemiological methods, the on-going COVID-19 pandemic requires effective approaches for controlling the disease spread. The use of digital technologies has been discussed in this context, and digital contact tracing technology (DCTT) and vaccine passport are representative examples of such technologies. Ethical discussions on the application of these technologies have noted privacy breach and undermining social trust as concerns, arguing that these two aspects should be balanced with the public benefits of technology application. Discussions of digital technologies, including DCTT, as a pandemic response have called for a new perspective on existing public health ethics. This viewpoint paper proposes that applying solidarity as a regulatory principle to digital technologies can offer ways to pursue privacy and public interest as complementary instead of competitive values. Existing studies and discussions of digital technologies in the COVID-19 context were explored, particularly those focusing on the utilization and ethical aspects of DCTT. The development of solidarity in biomedical ethics and its application to public health ethics were also considered. The conclusion was reached that the acceptability of DCTT can increase when privacy is secured, which results in increased overall effectiveness of the technology. This can be achieved by applying solidarity as a regulatory principle, which requires individuals to participate, while empowering the privacy and social trust of participating individuals at the national level. Thus, this paper presents an ethical approach based on the principle of solidarity that reciprocates the interests of individuals and the collective instead of making them compete. This approach is expected to pave the way for an extended framework for both the pandemic response and digital approaches in public health that empower privacy and social trust.

Education, training, and experience in public health ethics and law within the UK public health workforce

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
A M Viens ◽  
Caroline Vass ◽  
Catherine R McGowan ◽  
Farhang Tahzib
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Workforce ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Public Health Workforce ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Education Training ◽  
Few Data ◽  
The Uk

Abstract Background Public health ethics and law (PHEL) is a core professional competency for the public health workforce. However, few data are available describing the extent to which UK public health workforce members experience ethical and legal issues or have sufficient educational and/or training background to adequately deal with such issues. Methods An anonymous online survey was developed for dissemination via member mailing lists of the: Faculty of Public Health, Royal Society of Public Health, and UK Public Health Register. Public Health England also included a link to the survey in their newsletter. The survey included questions about education, training, and experience in relation to PHEL. The survey was deployed from October 2017 to January 2018. Results The survey was completed by a diverse sample of five hundred and sixty-two individuals. The majority of respondents reported: (i) regularly encountering ethical issues, (ii) resolving ethical issues through personal reflection, (iii) having little or no education and training in PHEL, and (iv) questioning whether they have dealt with ethical issues encountered in practice in the best way. Conclusions The results suggest that there is a need to develop and support wider PHEL capacity within the UK public health workforce through the provision of PHEL education, training, guidance, and mentoring.

Obesity Prevention and Promotion of Good Nutrition: Public Health Ethics Issues

2019 ◽  
pp. 584-596
Author(s):  
Anne Barnhill
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Obesity Prevention ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Disadvantaged Groups ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Good Nutrition ◽  
Moral Blame

This chapter provides a brief introduction to obesity prevention and discusses some ethical concerns with obesity prevention efforts, as well as some ethical arguments for them. A first set of ethical issues centers on justice and the perceived inequity or unfairness of obesity prevention efforts, as well as justice-based arguments for obesity prevention efforts targeted at disadvantaged groups. A second set of ethical issues concerns stigma, responsibility, and moral blame, and whether obesity discourse and efforts inappropriately stigmatize or assign responsibility to individuals. A third set of ethical concerns focuses on choice, and whether government regulation of the marketplace is problematically paternalistic. After providing a brief overview of these ethical concerns with obesity prevention, the chapter ends by arguing that the ethical conversation would be enriched by more fully incorporating a discussion of the value of eating.

Distinctive Challenges of Public Health Ethics

2019 ◽  
pp. 11-20
Author(s):  
Ruth R. Faden ◽  
Sirine Shebaya ◽  
Andrew W. Siegel
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Collective Good ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
Future Health ◽  
Government Action ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Health Gains

Public health is (1) a collective good, (2) primarily focused on prevention, (3) often reliant on government action for its promotion, and (4) intrinsically outcome-oriented. These characteristics of public health give rise to a number of ethical issues, such as the balancing of future health gains against current ones, the justification for the state’s use of coercive powers to advance health, and the moral foundation of public health. There are also some broader conceptual and moral challenges that bear on how such public health ethics issues are addressed. One challenge concerns the scope of public health: Whose health does public health seek to protect and promote? Another challenge concerns the boundaries of public health: How broadly or narrowly should we understand what public health entails? This chapter offers an overview of these distinctive challenges of public health ethics.

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