The NCCHPP sets out to make knowledge from various disciplines available to public health actors. This includes drawing ethical considerations into discussions about public policy and public health. To this end, the Centre is developing work in ethics in two related projects, both of which are intended to contribute to the development of healthy public policies.
Public Health Ethics
Public health ethics (PHE) is a relatively new field of study that encourages interdisciplinary discussion of moral issues in the theory and practice of public health and preventive medicine. Emerging over the last 15 years out of dissatisfaction with the traditional orientations of biomedical ethics, PHE involves the explicit use of concepts from ethical and political theory to discuss and evaluate collective interventions that aim to protect and promote the health of groups and populations rather than of individuals.
The NCCHPP, on behalf of the six National Collaborating Centres for Public Health, is developing general public health ethics-related resources as well as those in the area of pandemic preparedness (click on any of the following to read more):
Ethics and public policy
This project has been carried out through a series of activities established in partnership with researchers associated with the Centre de recherche en éthique de l’Université de Montréal—CRÉUM (Université de Montréal Centre for Research in Ethics).
- Conference
One result of this work is a summary of a presentation by philosopher Daniel Weinstock on distributive justice in health. To read more about the presentation Health in Political Philosophy: What Kind of Good is It? click here.
- Reflective essays
The partnership also allowed for the development of a series of essays concerning some dimensions of healthy public policy promotion efforts by public health actors.
The objective of these essays is to allow reflection about positive and negative ethical issues surrounding different policy options (measures, interventions, programs, etc.) by providing synthesized views of contemporary developments in ethical thinking about public policy. The idea is to illustrate how ethical analysis can contribute to the analysis of healthy public policies.
The essays presented here are reflections that address the ethical issues of (click on the titles to read more):
- Public policies guided by the precautionary principle
- The promotion of autonomy in a multiethnic context
- The use of financial incentives for the adoption of healthy behaviours