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

Abstract #107924

Bruce Jennings, The Hastings Center, Garrison, NY 10524, 845-424-4040, jennings@thehastingscenter.org

In a well-ordered society it is reasonable to expect citizens to contribute to some extent to the protection and promotion of public health. There are, in fact, a variety of ways for citizens to do this in addition to the role they may be said to have in the maintenance of their own health and that of their family. Hence, successful public health interventions may presuppose certain civic virtues; and these interventions may also nurture and strengthen such virtues when they are attenuated. Exploring the relationship between individual liberty and public health authority in this way is unusual; it offers a different perspective on ethical issues in public health than an account that pits libertarian liberalism against traditional forms of utilitarian welfarism in public health or against some newer forms of communitarianism. Such debates seem to be hardening into rigid, totalizing oppositions that lead to no new insight or resolution. This paper shifts the focus away from contemporary liberalism and explores how a civic theoretical perspective (traditionally known as “civic republicanism”) on public health can reformulate ethical issues. To this end, the paper examines tensions between two other theoretical paradigms that thus far have not been adequately discussed in relation to public health ethics, namely, civic republicanism and deliberative democracy.

Learning Objectives:

• 1.Define the limitations of a liberal understanding of rights for public health ethics.
• 2.Analyse an alternative theory of rights drawn from the tradition of civic republican politial theory.
• 3.Apply a civic theory of civil rights and citizenship to public health issues, such as health promotion policies.

Keywords: Ethics, Community Participation

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.

Recorded presentation