Ethics in Public Health: A Closer Look at Current Issues

Originally webcast on June 20, 2013

Speaker:
Bruce White, DO, JD
Director of the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical Center

The public health workforce is charged with the task of promoting and protecting the health of all populations. As such, public health workers encounter ethical issues in many of their regular activities, assignments and decisions. Often, government assistance, oversight or intervention is involved to facilitate this process and ensure that ethical issues are carefully considered.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define public health ethics as a "systematic process to clarify, prioritize and justify possible courses of public health action based on ethical principles, values and beliefs of stakeholders, and scientific and other information." This broadcast will examine the definition of public health ethics, explore how ethical issues in public health may differ from other ethical issues, and review several current issues in public health ethics.