Abstract
Public health ethics deals with moral aspects of development, implementation, teaching, and research of public health. Public health practitioners have always been aware of the ethical dimension of their field, but public health ethics as a subdiscipline of bioethics has emerged only at the end of the last century, and it is still a young and unsettled field. Public health ethics studies various theories of ethics, which guide or could guide public health actions. Practical ethical decision making can be facilitated by applying one or more public health ethics frameworks. Public health encompasses a wide spectrum of activities and each of those is raising ethical issues. Challenges that particularly invite bioethics assessment are control of infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, SARS, influenza pandemic, and Ebola fever. Vaccination, isolation, and quarantine are examples of public health interventions that require balancing of health benefits to community with the loss of freedom for some individuals. Applying relevant moral considerations is also helpful for health-care promotions and lifestyle interventions, screening and testing, public health research, and efforts to address health equity. Public health ethics addresses also international collaboration on global health concerns.
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Balint, J., Philpott, S., Baker, R., & Strossberg, M. (2007). Ethics and epidemics. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing.
Bayer, R., Gostin, L. O., Jennings, B., & Steinbock, B. (2007). Public health ethics. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
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Kotalik, J. (2016). Public Health. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09483-0_358
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09483-0_358
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