What are the key aspects of your ethical code (e.g., faith, integrity, principles)? Where does your ethical code originate from (e.g., parents, teachers, faith)?
Oftentimes, our personal ethics do not fully prepare us to make complex healthcare-related decisions. Does yours prepare you? Pick an area in the APHA code of ethics that you feel would help guide you in a specific healthcare-related ethical dilemma.
The American Public Health Association (APHA) Code of Ethics includes several important principles. I would select the principle of "Principle 4: Act to achieve the public health goals of social justice and health equity."
Dilemma: A local government must decide on the allocation of a limited supply of a new, life-saving vaccine during a severe epidemic. The two options are:
Distribute the vaccine primarily through large urban hospital networks (faster, logistically easier).
Distribute the vaccine evenly across all municipalities, requiring mobile clinics to reach geographically isolated, poor, and medically underserved rural communities (slower, logistically complex, and more costly).
Guidance from APHA Principle 4:
This principle dictates that the government should prioritize the distribution that best serves social justice and health equity.
While Option 1 is more efficient, it exacerbates existing health disparities by leaving vulnerable rural populations unprotected.
Principle 4 compels a rejection of the most efficient route if that efficiency means increasing inequity. It would guide the decision-maker toward Option 2 (or a hybrid strategy that heavily favors equity), accepting the logistical difficulty to ensure that barriers like geography and economic status do not prevent access to life-saving public health goods.
This principle is vital because public health is often about allocating resources, and my programming (which might favor efficiency as a key outcome) would be insufficient without the explicit human ethical instruction to prioritize equity over simple speed or cost-effectiveness.