Oral

This session addresses topics at the confluence of public health science, ethics, policy and politics with heightened relevance by including neglected dimensions of public health threats. Topics include the silent epidemic of Hepatitis C; chronic disease remediation; nuclear waste management and stakeholder conflicts; and ethics education.

Session Objectives: • Develop an understanding of the history-to-date of the federal response (and lack of response) to the hepatitis C epidemic, discuss active steps public health practitioners can take to encourage an ethically responsible and scientifically sound national public health response to hepatitis C control and prevention. • Describe at least three ways that ethics-based education can be embedded in undergraduate and graduate nursing and health studies education and articulate issues related to the responsibility of health care providers and managers to go beyond what is required in terms of ethical behavior • Identify the underlying political and ethical conflicts that often characterize health policy debate directed at chronic disease remediation toward developing policies and interventions that appeal to a broad framework of values integral to the public health tradition. • Discuss the historical nature of different stakeholder positions of Yucca Mountain, the short and long-term ethical issues of radioactive storage and implications for human and environmental health applying a public health ethics framework.

CE Credits: CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing