[Ethical dimensions of prevention and planning in assisted-living facilities during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (Covid-19): a public health emergency.] / Dimensiones éticas de la prevención y planificación en los centros sociosanitarios durante la pandemia por SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19): una emergencia de salud pública.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (Covid-19) has had a major impact on residents of assisted-living facilities. While it is plausible that the characteristics of these patients and their special clinical fragility have contributed to their greater vulnerability to infection, other related factors cannot be ruled out, such as the quality of management at these centers and the lack of planning for actions taken before and during the health crisis. Both aspects pertain to the field of public health, where the ethics of the common good conflicts with the autonomy of the individual.

La pandemia por SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) ha tenido un gran impacto en los residentes de centros sociosanitarios. Es probable que las características de estos pacientes y su especial fragilidad clínica hayan contribuido a una mayor vulnerabilidad a la infección, pero no se pueden descartar otros factores asociados a la misma como son la gestión de los centros y la falta de planificación de las actuaciones antes y durante la crisis sanitaria. Ambos aspectos pertenecen al ámbito de la salud pública, donde la ética del bien común entra en conflicto con la autonomía de las personas.

Hygea y la virtud o recordando a Protágoras: diálogo sobre ética de la salud comunitaria. Informe SESPAS 2018 / Hygeia and virtue or remembering Protagoras: dialogue on community health ethics. SESPAS Report 2018

Conversación entre la ética y la salud pública sobre las implicaciones morales de la promoción de la salud comunitaria, en la que se destaca la importancia de respetar la autonomía y de contribuir al empoderamiento de la comunidad con la que se colabora, además de la conveniencia de establecer un compromiso explícito en el que consten los límites de la colaboración y de la oportunidad de una deontología específica

A dialogue between ethics and public health on the moral implications of the promotion of community health in which the importance of respecting autonomy and contributing to the empowerment of the community with which it collaborates is highlighted; in addition to the appropriateness of an explicit commitment that sets out the limits of collaboration and the opportunity for a specific deontology

Medicine for the City: Perspective and Solidarity as Tools for Making Urban Health.

The United States has pursued policies of urban upheaval that have undermined social organization, dispersed people, particularly African Americans, and increased rates of disease and disorder. Healthcare institutions have been, and can be, a part of this problem or a part of the solution. This essay addresses two tools that healthcare providers can use to repair the urban ecosystem-perspective and solidarity. Perspective addresses both our ability to envision solutions and our ability to see in the space in which we move. Solidarity is our ability to appreciate our fellowship with other people, a mindset that is at the heart of medical practice. These two tools lay the foundation for structurally competent healthcare providers to act in a restorative manner to create a health-giving built environment.

The Ebola outbreak in Western Africa: ethical obligations for care.

The recent wave of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in Western Africa and efforts to control the disease where the health system requires strengthening raises a number of ethical challenges for healthcare workers practicing in these countries. We discuss the implications of weak health systems for controlling EVD and limitations of the ethical obligation to provide care for patients with EVD using Nigeria as a case study. We highlight the right of healthcare workers to protection that should be obligatorily provided by the government. Where the national government cannot meet this obligation, healthcare workers only have a moral and not a professional obligation to provide care to patients with EVD. The national government also has an obligation to adequately compensate healthcare workers that become infected in the course of duty. Institutionalisation of policies that protect healthcare workers are required for effective control of the spread of highly contagious diseases like EVD in a timely manner.

Commentary on community-led total sanitation and human rights: should the right to community-wide health be won at the cost of individual rights?

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set out to halve the proportion of the population without access to basic sanitation between 1990 and 2015. The slow pace of progress has lead to a search for innovative responses, including social motivation approaches. One example of this type of approach is 'Community-led Total Sanitation' (CLTS). CLTS represents a major shift for sanitation projects and programmes in recognising the value of stopping open-defecation across the whole community, even when the individual toilets built are not necessarily wholly hygienic. However, recent publications on CLTS document a number of examples of practices which fail to meet basic ethical criteria and infringe human rights. There is a general theme in the CLTS literature encouraging the use of 'shame' or 'social stigma' as a tool for promoting behaviours. There are reported cases where monetary benefits to which individuals are otherwise entitled or the means to practice a livelihood are withheld to create pressures to conform. At the very extreme end of the scale, the investigation and punishment of violence has reportedly been denied if the crime occurred while defecating in the open, violating rights to a remedy and related access to justice. While social mobilisation in general, and CLTS in particular, have drastically and positively changed the way we think about sanitation, they neither need nor benefit from an association with any infringements of human rights.

Considering ethics in community eye health planning: perspectives from an existing model.

Despite the widespread acceptance of the principles of the Alma Ata Declaration of 1978 and the subsequent amendments, health for all has remained a distant dream in many parts of the developing world. Concerns such as the economic efficiency of health systems and their reach and coverage have dominated discussions of public health, with ethics remaining at best a shadowy set of assumptions or at worst completely ignored. Similarly, questions of ethics have been taken for granted and rarely addressed directly in the design of public health models across sectors and are rarely explicitly addressed. This paper uses the experience of the L V Prasad Eye Institute's (LVPEI) pyramidal model of eye healthcare delivery to explore ethical issues in the design and implementation of public health interventions. The LVPEI model evolved over time from its beginnings as a tertiary care centre to a network that spans all levels of eye care service delivery from the community through primary and secondary levels. A previously published analytical framework is applied to this model and the utility of this framework as well as the ethics of the LVPEI model are interrogated. An analytical and prescriptive framework is then evolved that could be used to build in and evaluate ethics in other public health delivery models.

Legal and ethical implications of health care provider insurance risk assumption.

From bedside to boardroom, nurses deal with the consequences of health care provider insurance risk assumption. Professional caregiver insurance risk refers to insurance risks assumed through contracts with third parties, federal and state Medicare and Medicaid program mandates, and the diagnosis-related groups and Prospective Payment Systems. This article analyzes the financial, legal, and ethical implications of provider insurance risk assumption by focusing on the degree to which patient benefits are reduced.

"Listen to the people": public deliberation about social distancing measures in a pandemic.

Public engagement in ethically laden pandemic planning decisions may be important for transparency, creating public trust, improving compliance with public health orders, and ultimately, contributing to just outcomes. We conducted focus groups with members of the public to characterize public perceptions about social distancing measures likely to be implemented during a pandemic. Participants expressed concerns about job security and economic strain on families if businesses or school closures are prolonged. They shared opposition to closure of religious organizations, citing the need for shared support and worship during times of crises. Group discussions elicited evidence of community-mindedness (e.g., recognition of an extant duty not to infect others), while some also acknowledged strong self-interest. Participants conveyed desire for opportunities for public input and education, and articulated distrust of government. Social distancing measures may be challenging to implement and sustain due to strains on family resources and lack of trust in government.

Augmenting frameworks for appraising the practices of community-based health interventions.

This paper aims at augmenting the frameworks proposed by Rifkin in 1996 to distinguish between target-oriented and empowerment approaches to participation in community-based health interventions. In her paper, Rifkin defined three criteria: who makes decisions on resource allocation, expected outcome and outcome assessment. We propose five additional criteria: the definition of community, the characteristics of the capacity-building process, the leadership characteristics, the documentation process, and ethical issues regarding participation. Derived from our analysis of a community-based project, the proposed criteria are discussed in the light of the principles of Popular Education and other literature on community participation. The augmented frameworks are intended to assist health professionals and planners interested in the empowerment approach of community participation to consciously sharpen their practice.

Holistic and sustainable health improvement: the contribution of the settings-based approach to health promotion.

Highlighting the need for holistic and sustainable health improvement, this paper starts by reviewing the origins, history and conceptualization of the settings approach to health promotion. It then takes stock of current practice both internationally and nationally, noting its continuing importance worldwide and its inconsistent profile and utilization across the four UK countries. It goes on to explore the applicability and future development of settings-based health promotion in relation to three key issues: inequalities and inclusion; place-shaping and systems-based responses to complex problems. Concluding that the settings approach remains highly relevant to 21st century public health, the paper calls on the new "Royal" to provide much-needed leadership, thereby placing settings-based health promotion firmly on the national agenda across the whole of the UK.

Translating social justice into clinical nurse specialist practice.

Translating social justice into clinical nurse specialist (CNS) practice involves not only facilitating equitable access to healthcare resources but also changing the definition of health from individual centric to population based. Clinical nurse specialists working within hospitals or healthcare systems generally have not explored the ethical conflicts between demand and available healthcare resources. Application of social justice to CNS practice requires microallocation decisions in direct patient care and macroallocation decisions in the distribution of all societal goods that alleviate health disparities. This article reviews the meaning, history, and current basis for the application of the principle of social justice to CNS practice.

The evolving role of partnerships in addressing community public health issues: policy and ethical implications.

The current state of health insurance coverage in the United States is deteriorating. Historically, efforts to address access at the federal level have met with insurmountable opposition. This article describes a model utilizing the Partnership Approach to Community Health Improvement to engage communities in developing creative ways of addressing local health issues, discusses the policy implications of such a model, and explores ethical issues inherent in the discussion of universal access. An argument is presented for a national dialogue seeking societal agreement to approach access and health from a perspective of solidarity.

"It's like Tuskegee in reverse": a case study of ethical tensions in institutional review board review of community-based participatory research.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) addresses the social justice dimensions of health disparities by engaging marginalized communities, building capacity for action, and encouraging more egalitarian relationships between researchers and communities. CBPR may challenge institutionalized academic practices and the understandings that inform institutional review board deliberations and, indirectly, prioritize particular kinds of research. We present our attempt to study, as part of a CBPR partnership, cigarette sales practices in an inner-city community. We use critical and communitarian perspectives to examine the implications of the refusal of the university institutional review board (in this case, the University of California, San Francisco) to approve the study. CBPR requires expanding ethical discourse beyond the procedural, principle-based approaches common in biomedical research settings. The current ethics culture of academia may sometimes serve to protect institutional power at the expense of community empowerment.

The edge of America: struggling for health and justice.

The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) is the national organization representing local public health agencies. NACCHO supports efforts that protect and improve the health of all people and all communities by promoting national policy, developing resources and programs, seeking health equity, and supporting effective local public health practice and systems.