Public health and the common good

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Vineis
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common

Paternalism, Autonomy, and the Common Good

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-109
Author(s):  
James Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Public Health Policy ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common

Public health policies are often accused of being paternalistic, or to show the ‘Nanny State’ in action. This chapter argues that complaints about paternalism in public health policy are, for a variety of reasons, much less convincing than is often thought. First, for conceptual reasons, it is difficult to specify what it would be for a policy to be paternalistic. Second, two of the elements that make paternalism problematic at an individual level—interference with liberty and lack of individual consent—are endemic to public policy contexts in general and so cannot be used to support the claim that paternalism in particular is wrong. The chapter concludes that instead of debating whether a given policy is paternalistic, it would be better to ask whether the infringements of liberty it contains are justifiable, without placing any weight on whether or not those infringements of liberty are paternalistic.

Urban Public HealthA Historical Perspective

Urban Health ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 169-178
Author(s):  
Richard Rodger
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Urban Health ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
The Common ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

Historical perspectives on urban health focus mainly on the production of public health, on strategies and policies deployed by towns and cities that are authorized to act for the common good. This chapter gives a largely chronological perspective on public health developments, from medieval to early modern, and then to a consideration of the major shifts in public health that occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although in this chapter most attention is devoted to European trends, the colonization of the Americas, Africa, and Asia ensured networks of knowledge that were, by contemporary standards, quite quickly disseminated, though locally taken up at very variable rates. The historical study of public health is, therefore, an inherently worldwide one, with the important qualification that the pace of change and uptake of ideas was uneven.

scholarly journals Beyond privacy vs. health: a justification analysis of the contact-tracing apps debate in the Netherlands

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lotje Elizabeth Siffels
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Orders Of Worth ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Government

Abstract In the Netherlands, as in many other nations, the government has proposed the use of a contact-tracing app as a means of helping to contain the spread of the corona virus. The discussion about the use of such an app has mostly been framed in terms of a tradeoff between privacy and public health. This research statement presents an analysis of the Dutch public debate on Corona-apps by using the framework of Orders of Worth by Boltanski and Thévenot (1991). It argues that this framework can help us to move beyond the dichotomy of privacy vs. public health by recognizing a plurality of conceptions of the common good in the debate about contact-tracing apps. This statement presents six orders of worth present in the Dutch debate: civic, domestic, vitality, market, industrial and project, and argues that the identification of which common goods are at stake will contribute to discussions about the use of this technology from a standpoint with a richer ethical perspective.

The Common Good and Common Ground

2019 ◽  
pp. 34-51
Author(s):  
Jonathan H. Marks
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Responsibility Of Government ◽  
Public Health Officials ◽  
The Common

This chapter reviews the related notions of the common good, the public good, and the public interest. Although corporations can contribute to the common good, they are not guardians of the common good. That is the responsibility of government bodies and public officials. There may be reasonable disagreements about how to define and promote the common good. But policymakers should not conflate the commercial interests of powerful industry actors with the common good. Nor should public officials confound the common good and common ground. Finding common ground with industry ordinarily requires public officials to take off the table interventions that might promote the common good. Public health officials should expressly consider ways to promote the public health that may not create benefits for the private sector, and may even be inimical to the interests of industry.

De volksgezondheid heeft specifieke ethische ijkpunten nodig

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. RAVEZ
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Health Needs ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Coercive Measures ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Expected Benefits

Public health needs its own ethical values. Public health ethics is guided by a core value: the defense of the common good, which may, in certain circumstances, conflict with the respect for individual freedom. The management of contagious infectious diseases in general, and the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in particular offer many examples of this ethical clash. Both victim and vector of the disease, the contagious patient must benefit from the best possible care and at the same time accept a duty of solidarity towards those he may infect. If, however, in certain circumstances, health constraints can be imposed on citizens in order to protect the common good, these coercive measures should be guided by clear ethical benchmarks. First of all, the threat for which we seek protection, must be significant and realistic. Secondly, the coercive measures put in place must have proven their effectiveness. Thirdly, the inconveniences linked to these measures must be proportional to the expected benefits and the targeted threat. Finally, the measures must be as least restrictive as possible.

Conscience and Religious Freedom Trump Public Health

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-4
Author(s):  
Michael Arthur Vacca ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right ◽  
Public Health And Safety

Conscience rights and public health often come into conflict. Both Catholic social teaching and the natural moral law give primacy to conscience and religious freedom. Those who put public health on a par with conscience and religious freedom, or who imply an equivalence among them, as if they were comparable elements of public policy, are misguided, however well intentioned. Ironically, the common good that is the foundation of the right to public health is harmed by violating conscience and religious freedom. The principle should be clear: all of society, not solely the state, should promote the common good through public health and safety measures insofar as doing so does not violate the dignity of the human person, especially in matters of conscience and religious freedom.

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