Introduction to public health ethics and the process of ethical analysis

Public health officials regularly have to balance competing ethical and professional obligations (e.g., efficiently but fairly allocating scarce resources, respecting individual rights while safe guarding the public’s health, protecting underserved and marginalized communities while engaging and sharing information in a transparent manner, and ensuring data confidentiality and individual privacy while conducting surveillance).  However, most public health officials have had little to no training on public health ethics or the process of ethical analysis and often feel they do not have the skills or tools to address challenging ethical issues.  The purpose of this presentation is to provide an overview of the field of public health ethics, to describe some of the fundamental differences between public health ethics and bioethics, and to propose a framework for addressing ethical issues that arise in the practice of public health. It is anticipated that following completion of the Learning Institute, participants will be able to recognize and analyze ethical concerns related to their public health practice and be able to use ethics frameworks to evaluate the ethical dimensions of alternative courses of actions, They will also be able to better integrate ethical considerations into their day-to-day decision making, especially where there is uncertainty regarding whether and when to use public health legal authority.