Like COVID-19, new infectious disease outbreaks emerge almost annually, and studies predict that this trend will continue due to a variety of factors, including an aging population, ease of travel, and globalization of the economy. In response to episodic public health crises, governments and organizations develop, implement, and enforce policies, procedures, protocols, and programs. The epidemiological triad is both a model of disease causation and fundamentally used to design and deploy such control measures. Here we adapt this model to the (...) workplace setting and use the epidemiological triad to characterize the related ethical challenges in implementing the control measures employers face as a guide for a workplace intervention framework. Through this approach, our aim is to show how an integrated ethical framework, grounded in epidemiological principles, has important implications for how we categorize, understand, and resolve the difficult decisions that emerge in the workplace under pandemic conditions. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S24-S29, March‐April 2022.

Ethical review and analysis of health policy may help to ensure policies address the needs of society and align with relevant values and principles. Indeed, researchers and bioethicists have recognized the need for ethical frameworks specifically for public health applications. The objective of this research was to compile structured tools for ethical review of health policy and to analyze these tools for their scope and philosophical underpinnings. A systematic search and review of academic and grey literature was conducted to compile (...) existing tools designed for health policy ethics review. The search yielded 13 health policy ethical review tools. Qualitative content analysis revealed that all of the tools were influenced by multiple ethical values and that a majority were influenced by more than one ethical theory. The most common values were non-maleficence and beneficence. The most common influencing ethical theory was the Principles Approach. The structure of the tools demonstrates a heterogeneity of methodology designs to approach policy ethics review. This research offers a unique contribution to the bioethics field that provides a useful resource and understanding of the current ethical review tools for health policy. (shrink)

The term “effective,” on its own, is honorific but vague. Interventions against serious mental illness may be “effective” at goals as diverse as reducing “apparent sadness” or providing housing. Underexamined use of “effective” and other success terms often obfuscates differences and incompatibilities in interventions, degrees of effectiveness, key omissions in effectiveness standards, and values involved in determining what counts as “effective.” Yet vague use of such success terms is common in the research, clinical, and policy realms, with consequences that negatively (...) affect the care offered to individuals experiencing serious mental illness. A pragmatist-oriented solution to these problems suggests that when people use success terms, they need to explain and defend the goals and supporting values embedded in the terms, asking and answering the questions, “Effective at what? For whom? How effective? And why that goal?” Practical and epistemic standards for effectiveness will likely remain plural for good reasons, but each standard should be well explained and well justified. (shrink)