BIOETHICS SEMINAR

March 4, 2015, 4:10-5:30 pm
155 College St., Room 610 (auditorium), 6^th floor

This event will be webcast:

https://jcb.adobeconnect.com/bioethicsseminars/

Public Health Ethics: What Next?

Introduction: Angus Dawson, PhD, Professor of Public Health Ethics, University of Birmingham, UK

Panel: 

• Cecile Bensimon, PhD, Faculty of Dentistry and Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto; 
• Diego Silva, PhD, Research Fellow, Institute for History, Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine, Hannover, 
• Germany; Maxwell J. Smith, Doctoral Student & CIHR Fellow in Public Health Policy, Dalla Lana School of Public Health & Joint Centre for Bioethics, University of Toronto;
• Alison Thompson, Assistant Professor, Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto;
• Ross Upshur, Department of Family and Community Medicine and Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Abstract: Public Health Ethics (PHE) has been one of the most significant areas of academic growth in bioethics over the last ten or more years. Members of the JCB have been key to some of these developments, including key input on SARS, TB and pandemics. This seminar will celebrate these achievements, but also propose avenues for possible future work in this field. Each speaker will talk for 10 minutes and focus on different aspects of the general theme. Issues to be discussed will include future opportunities for theoretical developments in PHE (e.g. the role of solidarity, reciprocity, common goods etc.), how PHE can draw upon elements from other areas (e.g. environmental ethics, global ethics, systems theory etc.), how PHE can inform public health policy and ways that the public can be engaged on important issues in PHE, and, lastly, how the issues to be considered part of PHE can be expanded from the focus on infectious diseases that has been at its heart up to now, to include more consideration of ethical issues relating to health promotion, mental health, the social, natural and built environment, food, air and water quality, and socio-economic determinants of health.