Global Health Ethics: Increasing the Discussion of its Existence

Global Health Ethics: Increasing the Discussion of its Existence

In reflecting on the discussion in the introductory class this past week together with the videos we had watched and reading previous blog posts written by class alumni, I had begun to examine the ethical implications of all that comes with global public health. This includes a broad portfolio of topics needing to be considered including but certainly not limited to; cultural sensitivities, ailment severity, practice, and the question of prioritizing global public health interventions and its justification. This was perhaps inspired by my recent read by Stephen Holland and his book simply titled “Public Health Ethics” (Holland, 2015).

Holland considers public health ethics in his book solely based on western cultures but that very point brought me to want to expand on a global scale and examine ‘global public health ethics’. Coming out of my broad research amongst scholarly articles relatively empty-handed, I found that the majority of research and discussions focused on one subset of cultural group and not a total perspective on what is public health ethics on a global scale. This raised the question as to why is there a divide in such a discussion on public health ethics when the subject matter across both Western and Eastern cultures-  or any other type of divide for that matter- is by the very definition, the human race.

Holland’s divide as well the gap evident in academic research inspired me to bring the discussion to this post and reflect on the question of should there be a separate consideration or any type of divide amongst groups of people when we talk about and make decisions on public health and its ethical implications?  Of course, this is very broadly speaking as ethics can be applied and should be applied based on each case and its public health intervention.

Certainly, this is my personal viewpoint, I welcome all comments and ideas. It is my belief that forming such distinction across groups is the reason as to why we continue to have such an oxymoron of health disparities amongst our world today. As I am a firm believer that research in academia brings about policy change- the very contributing factor to improving health- that perhaps by eliminating such distinctions in our discussions on global health ethics we can strive to dissipate disparities all together. Gostin and Taylor (2008) discuss the need for a Global Health Law, one that is inspired by globalization and I cannot agree more! More discussions such as these should be brought forth more so more than ever before.

Increasing the amount of discussions on public health ethics and interventions on a global scale within academia and industry we can, by the very nature of it, create a global health environment that is closing the gap more quickly on the existence of many health disparities. 

As Paul Farmer concludes in his Preface "We live in one world, not three [...]" (Farmer et al., 2013, pp. xxiii)

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Gostin LO, Taylor AL (2008) Global health law: a definition and grand challenges. Public Health Ethics, 1, 53 –63.

Holland, S. (2015). Public health ethics. John Wiley & Sons.

Farmer, P; Kim, J. Y; Kleinman, A.; Basilico, M. (2013). Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction. University of California Press.