Racism as a Public Health Crisis: How the American Public Health Association Code of Ethics Provides Guidance for Navigating Ethical Dilemmas among Socially Disadvantaged Communities
Wendy Jiang1, University Of Alabama At Birmingham Birmingham 1University Of Alabama At Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA
Abstract
Existing scholarship is successfully advancing conversations around medical mistrust by acknowledging the macro-level systems, policies, and institutional practices that accumulate over time and ultimately give rise to medical mistrust at the individual level. Relatedly, new public health paradigms that conceptualize and address structural racism as a public health crisis are being considered at a national level. Scholars and practitioners are reimagining ethical public health practice with systematic efforts to articulate ethical principles and frameworks to guide ethical inquiry in public health. Public health ethics as a framework has the potential to advance health equity by providing ethical action guidance in public health research, education, and practice.
The American Public Health Association (APHA) Code of Ethics is a set of professional standards and expectations intended for public health practitioners throughout the field. This analytical project involves evaluating and critiquing the APHA Code of Ethics in regards to its guidance for navigating ethical dilemmas and health inequities among socially disadvantaged communities. There are vague recommendations throughout the Code that describes health justice and equity and its promotion in all public health levels. We argue that it is important to explicitly state racism as a public health issue or a social determinant of health. In the absence of consensus on moral concepts and methods, the role of public health ethics as a discipline in addressing structural racism as a public health crisis is less clear. There is also no guidance on how to adopt resistance and advocacy as core values. Thus, the goal of the project is to give clear, specific recommendations on how the APHA Code of Ethics can provide guidance to public health professionals who work with socially disadvantaged populations.
Biography
Wendy Jiang is a third-year medical student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine. She graduated from the University of Alabama in May 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in public health. Her research interests include bioethics, racism, health equity, and medical education.