Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #107619

Dianne Quigley, PhD Candidate, Religion Dept., Syracuse University, 501 Hall of Languages, Syracuse, NY 13244, 315-443-3861, diquigle@syr.edu

Current ethical frameworks that guide traditional health research approaches are based on “principle ethics”; a set of universal principles that seek to protect individual human subjects in research practices. “Principle ethics” fall short in dealing with ethical issues that pertain to multicultural communities and the complexities surrounding moral actions with culturally-diverse values and knowledge traditions. The ethical relation in these research interactions often lies in the researcher's ability to understand the community contexts, to listen to a multiplicity of voices, to transfer power, skills and resources with marginalized groups, to learn from diverse values, traditions and cross-cultural knowledge systems. An understanding of ethical frameworks that stress communitarian and virtue ethics, post-modern ethics and indigenous ethics (Native science) can enrich the researchers and their community health partners in their ethical interactions with one another.

In this presentation, I will present the basic tenets of these ethical frameworks, using case studies that demonstrate these tenets in practice. For example, indigenous ethics stresses the importance of objective and subjective meanings (technical knowledge and community embedded knowledge) in the research design, data collection; and research outcomes - a holistic understanding of the multidimensional impacts of environmental contamination on community life. Similarly, indigenous ethics stresses “relatedness”, a respect for relationships among diverse groups and natural resources that influences the structure and process of the research activity. Postmodern and communitarian ethics offer reflection on power and privilege and communal respect. All these are critical to cultural competence in community research settings.

Learning Objectives:

(
• to teach participants about ethical frameworks for dealing with multicultural groups and communities. (
• to demonstrate how these ethical frameworks help to transform research and the researcher to deal with complex issues in multicultural community contexts. (
• to provide an orientation to virtue ethics, postmodern ethics and inddigenous ethics (Native Science)and the new practices they can offer to the researcher and community health partners in complex decision-making, skills transfer, power-sharing and incorporation of multiple values and knowledge traditions (
• to provide a selection of case studies and a bibliography as part of the learning experience.

Keywords: Cultural Competency, Ethics Training

Related Web page: www.researchethics.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.