medicine & health
Public Health Code of Ethics By Kayla Blades
Photo by Edward Jenner. [CC0]
T
he public health system in the United States is responsible for research and education that informs the decisions made regarding the population health of the entire country. Why do we trust the public health system? How do they provide the most unbiased information in a biased environment? What determines the principles by which such an important field abides? How do we fight the inequities faced in this field? Historically, the United States has seen cases of a lack of effectiveness of the public health system and the use of the public health system to abuse the disenfranchised. Instances such as forced sterilization in the U.S., the AIDS epidemic, and the Tuskegee study reveal a transgression pattern in the public health field. Dr. James Thomas is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During his epidemiologic research in the 1990s into Dr. James Thomas the syphilis epidemic in
Eastern North Carolina, the unethical aspects of the public health field became evident when he witnessed multiple instances of racism and social inequality. In response to the inequities he witnessed in the public health field, Dr. Thomas developed a research interest in health ethics and began studying ethics, philosophy, and theology. Dr. Thomas worked in conjunction with other scholars to establish A Code of Ethics for Public Health to combat these forces in hopes that it would lead to change and restructuring of the public health field. This code is not an institutionalized code that someone can violate, but rather it provides clarity on the purpose and values of public health. The public health ethics code was widely adopted by the American Public Health Association, and Dr. Thomas is now a resource for other institutions regarding the role of ethics in the public health field – specifically concerning epidemics and pandemics. Dr. James Thomas discusses how “a code of ethics is fundamentally about preserving humanity and humanizing people” and can be utilized to prevent such events and further develop and establish the public health field.1 Public health ethics addresses a power imbalance between individuals’ interests with the overall wellbeing of the community. In the United States, attempts to resolve this imbalance often occur in government
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