In "Public Health and Precarity," Michael Doan and Ami Harbin have done important work extending Sherwin's concept of relational autonomy to encompass relational agency—including agents such as communities and states. This opens up new ways of thinking about responsibility for public health in long-standing debates about the role of the state in public health.The case studies Doan and Harbin analyze are also important for thinking of the account of relational solidarity that Sherwin developed together with Baylis and Kenny, one element (...) of relational public health. The discussion may even open the space for a reformulation of relational solidarity. I will use the... (shrink)

Companies increasingly offer their employees the opportunity to participate in voluntary Workplace Health Promotion programmes. Although such programmes have come into focus through national and regional regulation throughout much of the Western world, their ethical implications remain largely unexamined. This article maps the territory of the ethical issues that have arisen in relation to voluntary health promotion in the workplace against the background of asymmetric relationships between employers and employees. It addresses questions of autonomy and voluntariness, discrimination and distributive justice, (...) as well as privacy and responsibility. Following this analysis, we highlight the inadequacy of currently established ethical frameworks to sufficiently cover all aspects of workplace health promotion. Thus, we recommend the consideration of principles from all such frameworks in combination, in a joint reflection of an Ethics of Workplace Health Promotion. (shrink)

One branch of bioethics assumes that mainly agents of the state are responsible for public health. Following Susan Sherwin’s relational ethics, we suggest moving away from a “state-centered” approach toward a more thoroughly relational approach. Indeed, certain agents must be reconstituted in and through shifting relations with others, complicating discussions of responsibility for public health. Drawing on two case studies—the health politics and activism of the Black Panther Party and the work of the Common Ground Collective in post-Katrina New Orleans—we (...) argue for the need to attend more carefully to the limitations of states and state-driven public health programs. (shrink)