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

Abstract #115301

Ruth Gaare Bernheim, JD, MPH, Institute for Practical Ethics, University of Virginia, P.O.Box 400800, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903, 434-924-3487, rg3r@virgina.edu, Jeffrey Kahn, PhD, MPH, Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesota, N504 Boynton, 410 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0346, and Alan Melnick, MD, MPH, Family Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, 3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Road, Portland, OR 97239.

The Individual and the Public Health Code of Ethics

Scholars, as well as public health practitioners, are addressing the ethical challenges of current global threats, such as SARS and bioterrorism, by developing new ethics frameworks and principles, such as the new "Principles of the Ethical Practice of Public Health." Presenters will examine a few public health cases in biopreparedness, developed with public health practitioners, as a way to explore the new Code of Ethics for Public Health. A special focus will be the way individual interests are considered in the Code and in traditional ethics analysis, as well as in updated public health laws. As an example, frameworks will be presented as guides for addressing such perplexing challenges as protecting individual interests when quarantining large numbers of community members and securing public cooperation.

Learning Objectives:

• To elucidate the way individual liberties and public health interests are articulated and balanced in the new Public Health Code of Ethics.
• To demonstrate, through the use of timely cases on biopreparedness developed with public health officials, the way the Code of Ethics can be used in public health practice as a framework for analysis in decision making.

Keywords: Ethics, Law

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.