Philosophy of Public Health

Keynote Address: Prof. Benjamin Smart (University of Johannesburg)

ABSTRACT: Public health policymaking, like medical practice, has a substantive impact on people’s lives: their wellbeing, their life-expectancy, and even liberty. There is thus a significant ethical dimension to public health policymaking.  Policies can either respect the autonomy of those affected, or entirely ignore it. They might increase or reduce health inequalities. Furthermore, policies that enhance the health of one person or group might do so at the expense of others. Indeed, the reality of health economics ensures this is almost always the case. Public health ethics is intertwined with the goals of public health. The traditional goal of public health is simply to improve the health of populations (however that is to be interpreted), but additional egalitarian considerations have come to the fore in recent years. In this talk I suggest one should adopt a novel capacities approach to both measuring health, and to ethical decision making in public health policymaking; through this egalitarian desiderata would automatically be accommodated. I will consider a number of existing approaches to public health ethics, including traditional utilitarianism, Principlism, and Sridhar Venkantapuram's Capabilities Approach to health. Whilst each have their benefits, I argue that none of them provide an adequate framework for public health ethics. I conclude by proposing capacities-based principlism - an ethical framework that suggests duties both to the individuals comprising populations, and to populations as complex systems in their own right.

WORKSHOP: Short contributions concerning the Capacities-Based Priciplism for Public Health Ethics and other philosophical and interdisciplinary aspects of public healths.

Here are some examples of potential topics:

Ontology

• What is population health? What viable theories of it are there?
• Is health (well-being or ill-being) a property of populations or of individuals only?
• Are populations complex systems with emergent properties?
• What are the causes and/or determinants of population health? (In general and specifically, e.g. social, economic, environmental, and genetic factors and their interactions).

Epistemology

• How do we investigate population health? What are the methodological challenges?
• What is public health as a discipline and how does it relate to other disciplines such as epidemiology, immunology, microbiology, demography, health informatics, policy analysis? Can interdisciplinary approaches enhance our understanding of population health?
• What types of evidence are there, how reliable are they, and how do we integrate them? How do we evaluate applicability of evidence-based medicine and evidence-based policies?
• How do we measure population health effectively?

Ethics

• How do different moral frameworks (e.g., deontological, consequentialist, virtue ethics, capacties approach, etc.) compare in their application to public health?
• Development of a principlist approach to public health ethics that emphasizes the duty to provide individuals with the capacity to lead meaningful lives.
• How can public health policies balance individual rights with the collective good, especially in times of crisis such as pandemics?
• What is the goal of public health interventions and what is the role of scientists, ethicits and other experties toward it?

History

• How has the concept of population health evolved over time and in various cultures?
• What is the role of cultural, religious, societal, legal and other norms that impact population health?
• How has individual and population health interacted and influenced each other? 
• What are the epidemiological transitions and what challenges we face, including at the level of global catastrophic risks? Are there specific types of challenges linked with epidemics of infectious diseases?

Submission Guidelines

Abstract Submission Deadline: August, 31st, 2024 / Extended Deadline: September, 18th, 2024.

Given the interest, we also consider streaming the event, pls, let us know in case you'd be interested.

Please, indicate if you are unable to attend in person, online contributions will be considered. 

Notification of Acceptance: September, 8th, 2024.

Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and should outline the main argument and contribution of the paper. Please submit your abstracts and short biografical information to [email protected] with the subject line "Philosophy of Public Health Workshop Submission."