Public Health Ethics (PHIL 441)
Instructor: Carina Fourie fourie@uw.edu
UPDATE: Office hours: T 9.30-10.30am & TH 10.45-11.45am PST or by appointment, Location: Canvas Conference
For the full syllabus click here.
The philosophy and ethics of public health are growing fields of systematic study. As the focus of public health ethics is on the health of a public or a population, rather than on individual patients, and often on prevention rather than on treatment, public health ethics appears to raise different questions and require unique answers to other fields of bioethics. Over the last decade there has been greater recognition of the distinctiveness of public health ethics as a field, and it is gradually developing into an independent sub-discipline of bioethics, with significant links to political philosophy and the philosophy of science, among other philosophical fields.
In this course, we will investigate public health ethics as a distinctive field of applied ethics. In order to do so, we will assess what it means that public health focuses on populations and on prevention. We will also consider the particularity of the sciences associated with public health as well as the methods with which one does public health ethics. In conjunction, we will be attempting to answer central normative ethical questions and to assess real-life public health program and policies. For example, we will examine applied problems associated with pandemics, vaccinations, racial disparities in health, age and age discrimination, HIV-AIDS, and global health.
Course Module Overview:
Course Resources - Use as needed
Week 1: Introduction to course
Week 2: What is 'the public'? What is 'health'?
Week 3: Ethical Background; Infectious Diseases
Week 4: Infectious Diseases CNTD
Week 5: Infectious Disease; Injustice
Paper 1 – Ethical Assessments of WA Public Health Regulations
Week 7: HIV-AIDS & the Human Right to Health
Week 8: HIV-AIDS & Methodologies
Week 10: Discrimination & Prioritization