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1 – 10 of over 27000Suicide is primarily conceptualised as an event with causes relating to individual lives. However, we argue that it is impor tant not to lose sight of the fact that not all causes…
Abstract
Suicide is primarily conceptualised as an event with causes relating to individual lives. However, we argue that it is impor tant not to lose sight of the fact that not all causes of suicide are related simply to individual action and circumstances. Clear evidence exists for some risk factors for suicide being visable at the population level or related to membership of various social groups. Strategies to prevent suicide, therefore, ought to focus on such causes (eg. injustice, discrimination, mental illness in general), not just on causes relating to individuals. In turn, this means that suicide prevention should not merely focus on trying to reduce access to the means of suicide by individuals (eg. shotguns in rural areas, pesticides in India, means of strangulation in prisons etc) but should expand to include such things as socio‐economic determinants and other population influences on mental health. We argue that suicide ought to be thought of as being, in an impor tant sense, a public health problem, and that the resources of public health ethics are one impor tant element in seeking to address this impor tant issue.
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In April 1988, the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRC) (see sidebar) published “AIDS: Law, Ethics and Public Policy.” As part of the NRC's Scope Note Series…
Abstract
In April 1988, the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRC) (see sidebar) published “AIDS: Law, Ethics and Public Policy.” As part of the NRC's Scope Note Series, the paper offered a current overview of issues and viewpoints related to AIDS and ethics. Not meant to be a comprehensive review of all AIDS literature, it contained selected citations referring to facts, opinion, and legal precedents, as well as a discussion of different ethical aspects surrounding AIDS. Updating the earlier work, this bibliography provides ethical citations from literature published from 1988 to the present.
James Brackley, Penelope Tuck and Mark Exworthy
This paper examines the contested value of healthy life and wellbeing in a context of severe austerity, exploring how the value of “Public Health” is constructed through and with…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines the contested value of healthy life and wellbeing in a context of severe austerity, exploring how the value of “Public Health” is constructed through and with material-discursive practices and accounting representations. It seeks to explore the political and ethical implications of constructing the valuable through a shared consensus over the “facts” when addressing complex, multi-agency problems with long time horizons and outcomes that are not always easily quantifiable.
Design/methodology/approach
The theorisation, drawing on science and technology studies (STS) scholars and Karen Barad's (2007) agential realism, opens up the analysis to the performativity of both material and discursive practices in the period following a major re-organisation of activity. The study investigates two case authorities in England and the national regulator through interviews, observations and documentary analysis.
Findings
The paper demonstrates the deeply ethical and political entanglements of accounting representations as objectivity, consensus and collective action are constructed and resisted in practice. It goes on to demonstrate the practical challenges of constructing “alternative accounts” and “intelligent accountabilities” through times of austerity towards a shared sense of public value and suggests austerity measures make such aims both more challenging and all the more essential.
Originality/value
Few studies in the accounting literature have explored the full complexity of valuation practices in non-market settings, particularly in a public sector context; this paper, therefore, extends familiar conceptual vocabulary of STS inspired research to further explore how value(s), ethics and identity all play a crucial role in making things valuable.
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Gabrielle Samuel and Federica Lucivero
In April 2020, it was announced that NHSX, a unit of the UK National Health Service (NHS) responsible for digital innovation, was developing a contact tracing app that would offer…
Abstract
Purpose
In April 2020, it was announced that NHSX, a unit of the UK National Health Service (NHS) responsible for digital innovation, was developing a contact tracing app that would offer a digital solution to managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the urgency with which the app was developed, a clear commitment was made to designing the technology in a way that enshrined key ethical principles, and an ethics advisory board (EAB) was established to provide timely advice, guidance and recommendations on associated ethical issues. Alongside this, there were extensive criticisms of how NHSX adhered to ethical principles in the handling of the app development-criticisms that require empirical exploration. This paper explores how ethics was incorporated into decision-making during governance processes associated with the development of app.
Design/methodology/approach
Interviews were conducted with those involved in the app's development/governance, those with a consulting role associated with the app, or those who sat on the EAB.
Findings
The EAB fulfilled an important role by introducing ethical considerations to app developers. Though at times, it was difficult to accommodate key ethics principles into governance processes, which sometimes suffered from little accountability.
Originality/value
While several articles have provided overviews of ethical issues, or explored public perceptions towards contact tracing apps, to the best the authors, knowledge this is the first empirical piece analysing ethics governance issues via stakeholder interviews.
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Francesco Taroni, Daniel Z. Louis and Elaine J. Yuen
The European Community is currently experimenting with the use ofDiagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) and other patient classificationsystems. Disease Staging is a clinically based…
Abstract
The European Community is currently experimenting with the use of Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) and other patient classification systems. Disease Staging is a clinically based classification system which focuses on the dimensions of severity of illness and can be implemented using the same data required for the DRGs. Reports a pilot study in the Emilia‐Romagna region of Italy, where data were analysed from three hospitals for patients hospitalized in 1988 with four diseases: coronary artery disease/acute myocardial infarction, cholecystitis, appendicitis, and diabetes mellitus. The same patients were classified using DRGs and Disease Staging, and the Disease Staging methodology was used to analyse issues of timeliness of hospital admission, length of stay patterns, and in‐hospital mortality rates.
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Konrad Szocik and Rakhat Abylkasymova
Current covid-19 pandemic challenges health-care ethics. Ones of the most important challenges are medical resources allocation and a duty to treat, often addressed to medical…
Abstract
Purpose
Current covid-19 pandemic challenges health-care ethics. Ones of the most important challenges are medical resources allocation and a duty to treat, often addressed to medical personnel. This paper suggests that there are good reasons to rethink our health-care ethics for future global catastrophic risks. Current pandemic shows how challenging can be an issue of resources allocation even in a relatively small kind of catastrophic event such as covid-19 pandemic. In this paper, the authors show that any future existential bigger catastrophe may require new guidelines for the allocation of medical resources. The idea of assisted dying is considered as a hypothetical scenario.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual work based on conceptual analysis at the intersection of risk studies, health-care ethics and future studies. This study builds the argument on the assumption that the covid-19 pandemic should be treated as a sort of global catastrophic risk. Findings show that there are no such attempts in currently published peer-reviewed academic literature. This is crucial concept for the meta-analysis. This study shows why and how current pandemic can be interpreted in terms of global catastrophic risk even if, literally, covid-19 does not meet all criteria required in the risk studies to be called a global catastrophe.
Findings
We can expect an emergence of discriminatory selection policy which will require some actions taken by future patients like, for example, genetic engineering. But even then it is inevitable that there will still be a large number of survivors who require medical assistance, which they have no chance of receiving. This is why this study has considered the concept of assisted dying understood as an official protocol for health-care ethics and resources allocation policy in the case of emergency situations. Possibly more controversial idea discussed in this paper is an idea of assisted dying for those who cannot receive required medical help. Such procedure could be applied in a mass-scale during a global catastrophic event.
Research limitations/implications
Philosophers and ethicists should identify and study all possible pros and cons of this discrimination rule. As this study’s findings suggested above, a reliable point of reference is the concept of substantial human enhancement. Human enhancement as such, widely debated, should be studied in that specific context of discrimination of patients in an access to limited medical resources. Last but not least, scientific community should study the concept of assisted dying which could be applied for those survivors who have no chance of obtaining medical care. Such criteria and concepts as cost-benefit analysis, the ethics of quality of life, autonomy of patients and duty of medical personnel should be considered.
Practical implications
Politicians and policymakers should prepare protocols for global catastrophes where these discrimination criteria would have to be applied. The same applies to the development of medical robotics aimed at replacing human health-care personnel. We assume that this is important implication for practical policy in healthcare. Our prediction, however plausible, is not a good scenario for humanity. But given this realistic development trajectory, we should do everything possible to prevent the need for the discriminatory rules in medical care described above.
Originality/value
This study offers the idea of assisted dying as a health-care policy in emergency situations. The authors expect that next future global catastrophes – looking at the current pandemic only as a mild prelude – will force a radical change in moral values and medical standards. New criteria of selection and discrimination will be perceived as much more exclusivist and unfair than criteria applied today.
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Vibhav Singh and Surabhi Verma
The sudden onset of COVID-19 has brought about a watershed moment in the current research across all disciplines. As it has impacted almost all aspects of human existence…
Abstract
Purpose
The sudden onset of COVID-19 has brought about a watershed moment in the current research across all disciplines. As it has impacted almost all aspects of human existence, academicians are aggressively trying to understand the phenomenon from multidisciplinary perspectives. In this regard, the present study attempts to provide an in-depth understanding of academia's response pattern in the field of social sciences using a grounded theory literature review and bibliometric analysis.
Design/methodology/approach
The present study analyzed 395 research articles on the pandemic phenomenon, yielding five main themes and 11 sub-themes.
Findings
The emergent research themes are global impact on public health, the influence of COVID-19 on workplace functioning, global governance in COVID-19, research ethics in scholarly works and the influence of COVID-19 on demography.
Originality/value
Drawing from these themes, the authors provide propositions, policy implications and future research directions.
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The purpose of this paper is to encourage greater cross‐disciplinary understanding of the development of crime prevention and public health approaches, by using a wider framework…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to encourage greater cross‐disciplinary understanding of the development of crime prevention and public health approaches, by using a wider framework of analysis.
Design/methodology/approach
The findings of this paper are based on the scanning of a range of papers and developments across both the crime prevention and public health fields. The concept of convergence (which can be found in various fields of science and social science) provides a wider framework for analysis.
Findings
The resulting analysis suggests an increasing convergence between crime prevention and public health approaches, in terms of theory, policy and practice. It is also suggested that wider political and socio‐demographic trends could lead to the enforced integration.
Research limitations/implications
This paper does not draw on primary research.
Practical implications
Those working in each field are then left to choose whether to support such convergence, or alternatively argue for why the two areas should remain distinctive.
Social implications
This paper argues for greater consideration across the disciplines of the likely consequences of convergence.
Originality/value
There have been a number of previous papers on various intersections between crime prevention and public health. This paper seeks to draw on these, and offer a broader viewpoint on the development of the two disciplines within a wider framework of analysis.
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