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?
