Ethics in the worst of times: Public engagement in Minnesota about rationing during a pandemic

Disaster can bring out the best and worst in us as individuals and as a society. If the next pandemic is as severe as the influenza pandemic of 1918/1919, our already stretched public health and health care systems will be sorely stressed. Hard decisions will have to be made. Our challenge is to rise to the occasion, building on a foundation of careful and inclusive planning.

In phase two of the Minnesota Pandemic Ethics Project, ethicists from the Minnesota Center for Health Care Ethics and University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics are engaging the public to respond to and refine an ethical framework for rationing a range of critical health-related resources in a severe influenza pandemic. We will report on what we have learned about HOW to have the conversation as well as what Minnesotans are saying once engaged.

This session will present the common and divergent values that we are eliciting from Minnesotans. We cross boundaries of culture, ethnicity, wealth, disability, education and geography to discern widely shared values that can ground a common perspective of our collective good. We explore how diverse populations can talk together, learn from one another's experiences with scarcity and seek agreement about values to guide statewide pandemic response and rationing.