Applied Ethics in Real Time Decision Making in Public Health Emergencies

Contact: Lincoln Professor James Hodge, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This project is under the direction of Lincoln Professor James Hodge. It incorporates an applied ethics component into an existing Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grant on legal and policy decisions in real time health emergencies. The aim is to produce both scholarly contributions and “practical guidance” on the application of ethical principles in pandemics and other health emergencies. As part of the project an interactive exercise was developed with the ASU Decision Theater combining legal theory and ethics with decision science. This project gave rise to the strictly ethics focused project described above on an ethics code for those involved in decision-making in healthcare emergencies.

Public Health Emergency Ethics

The Ethics in Public Health Emergency Preparedness Project is a collaboration of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics and PHLPP. The primary objective of the project is to create through consensus a model code of public health emergency ethics for health care, public health, and emergency preparedness officials and practitioners in Arizona.

This effort commenced with a one-day meeting and workshop that was held on November 4, 2011. The meeting included individuals of varied backgrounds including: bioethicists, public health ethicists, emergency planners, hospital administrators, public health officials, legal counsel, and others. This select group convened to consider multifarious ethical issues at the intersection of public health and emergency preparedness. To access the presentations from the meeting, the briefing book, and the current draft of the Arizona Code of Public Health Emergency Ethics derived from this session, please click here.

The goal of the project is to generate a series of core principles of ethics to help guide critical decisions among public and private actors during public health emergencies. Development of an Arizona-based model Code of Public Health Emergency Ethics may help provide consistent, morally-justifiable guidance for these difficult decisions.

While many states such as Delaware, Maryland, Michigan, New York, and Texas have engaged in similar efforts, neither public nor private sector entities in Arizona and other states have previously aligned to proffer widely-accepted principles to guide ethical issues arising in public health emergencies. Depending on the success of the initial workshop and development of core principles of public health emergency ethics in Arizona, this model may be used in a subsequent stage of the project to frame a national approach for public and private entities to use in future emergency events.

In 2013, the project to develop a Model Code of Public Health Emergency Ethics will be vaulted to the national stage, with an anticipated meeting and additional consensus building among national figures in ethics, law, public health practice, and emergency preparedness. In collaboration with the American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, a projected outcome from these efforts is the revision of the existing Arizona-based model for use and consideration at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels. Furthermore, additional activity re: the Arizona-based model will be highlighted as part of the upcoming Crisis Standards of Care meeting organized by the Arizona Department of Health Services on Thursday, January 24, 2013. At this meeting, Professor Hodge and Lincoln Fellow, Dan Orenstein, will present on the scope and utility of the model code during public health emergencies.

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The Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics is a research unit in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Lincoln Center For Applied Ethics
PO Box 874503, Tempe, AZ 85287-4503
Physical: Discovery Hall, Room 213 | map
Phone: 480-727-7691 | Fax: 480-965-2710