Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics

Natural disasters and cholera outbreaks. Ebola, SARS, and concerns over pandemic flu. HIV and AIDS. E. coli outbreaks from contaminated produce and fast foods. Threats of bioterrorism. Contamination of compounded drugs. Vaccination refusals and outbreaks of preventable diseases. These are just some of the headlines from the last 30-plus years highlighting the essential roles and responsibilities of public health, all of which come with ethical issues and the responsibilities they create.

Public health has achieved extraordinary successes. And yet these successes also bring with them ethical tension. Not all public health successes are equally distributed in the population; extraordinary health disparities between rich and poor still exist. The most successful public health programs sometimes rely on policies that, while improving public health conditions, also limit individual rights. Public health practitioners and policymakers face these and other questions of ethics routinely in their work, and they must navigate their sometimes competing responsibilities to the health of the public with other important societal values such as privacy, autonomy, and prevailing cultural norms.

This Oxford Handbook provides a sweeping and comprehensive review of the current state of public health ethics, addressing these and numerous other questions. Taking account of the wide range of topics under the umbrella of public health and the ethical issues raised by them, this volume is organized into fifteen sections. It begins with two sections that discuss the conceptual foundations, ethical tensions, and ethical frameworks of and for public health and how public health does its work. The thirteen sections that follow examine the application of public health ethics considerations and approaches across a broad range of public health topics. While chapters are organized into topical sections, each chapter is designed to serve as a standalone contribution. The book includes 73 chapters covering many topics from varying perspectives, a recognition of the diversity of the issues that define public health ethics in the U.S. and globally. This Handbook is an authoritative and
indispensable guide to the state of public health ethics today.

About the Author:
Anna C. Mastroianni, JD, MPH, is Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law and Associate Director of the university's Institute for Public Health Genetics. She has additional faculty appointments in the university's School of Public Health (Health Services) and School of Medicine (Bioethics & Humanities; Pediatrics). She is Affiliate Faculty at the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Seattle Children's Hospital and Research Institute. Professor Mastroianni serves on international and US advisory committees, most recently for the Wellcome Trust, the Population Council, and the National Academy of Medicine. She is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, recognized for her contributions to health policy, law, and bioethics. https: //www.law.uw.edu/directory/faculty/mastroianni-anna L
Jeffrey P. Kahn, PhD, MPH, is the Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, and the Levi Professor of Bioethics and Public Policy. He is also Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center, and has chaired or served on committees and panels for the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Academy of Medicine, where he is currently chair of the Board on Health Sciences Policy and the Committee on Aerospace Medicine and Medicine of Extreme Environments. https: //bioethics.jhu.edu/people/profile/jeffrey-kahn/

Nancy E. Kass, ScD, is Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education, Johns Hopkins University and Phoebe R. Berman Professor of Bioethics and Public Health in the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she is also Professor of Health Policy and Management. Dr Kass spent a year on assignment as an expert at the World Health Organization in Geneva, and served as a consultant to the President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and the National Academy of Sciences. She is Chair of NIH Precision Medicine Initiative Central IRB and previously co-chaired the National Cancer Institute Committee to develop Recommendations for Informed Consent Documents. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center. https: //bioethics.jhu.edu/people/profile/nancy-kass/