South Heartland District Health Department

Ethics

May 06, 2024

Launch the media gallery 1 player

Public Health Ethics

South Heartland strives to follow the principles of the ethical practice of public health. This promotes and protects the public’s health while ensuring that clients and customers are safe and are not inadvertently harmed due to programmatic or policy actions.

South Heartland maintains an ethics committee whose role is to:

• Clarify, prioritize, and justify possible courses of public health action
• Provide greater transparency in decision making to build public trust
• Strengthen scientific integrity and professional excellence

Ethical considerations are important when deliberating public health issues such as:

• How should SHDHD allocate limited resources (e.g., ventilators, vaccine, etc.) during a pandemic outbreak?
• How should SHDHD avoid actual or perceived conflict of interest in working with vendors?
• When should someone be isolated or quarantined to protect the health of others?

Latest Deliberations

• Balancing Public Health Responsibilities and Client Rights -- June 27, 2022

• Ethics of SHDHD Staff Serving Family Members --  January 23, 2020

• Ethics of Community-Based Screening -- April 8, 2019