Law and Ethnics Flashcards
Why are law and ethnics important in public health?
Law and ethics provide the framework for decision-making regarding interventions that keep populations healthy.
What are public health laws?
PH laws are formal practices enforced by authorities exemplified by statutes, regulations and court decisions.
What are public health ethnics?
PH ethics arise from informational policies and codes of professional conduct to guide public health practice.
What does the practice of PH law do and address?
The law addresses the government’s power and duty to protect the public’s health and the limitations on those powers.
PH law balances the assurance of the common good with the protection of civil liberties.
What is the role of PH ethics on the law?
Ethics play an important role to law and refers to the discipline that examines what practices make good conduct in a particular situation or dilemma. The study of ethics help to determine and justify the most appropriate course of action.
Federalism
Term that describes the distribution of power between the individual states and the national government.
What are the 3 branches of the state and federal levels of government?
Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches.
What are public health regulations?
Regulations are the set of rules that describe the implementation of legislation.
- promulgated by the executive branch (ex: president and admin agencies like the CDC or FDA)
Protected Health Information (PHI)
Any identifiable information about an individual, including demographic data, physical or mental health condition, or receipt of health care services.
Who are the covered entities under HIPAA?
health care providers, health care plans, and healthcare clearing houses.
What are permitted disclosures?
Permitted disclosures relates to safety and welfare.
Ex: disclosing PHI of victims of abuse to appropriate authorities.
Parens patriae
The state’s legal action on behalf of individuals who cannot protect themselves, such as suspected victims of child neglect or elder abuse.
What is the HIPAA privacy rule?
The rule specifies specific circumstances in which a covered entity may use and disclose PHI, including when an individual’s authorization is required for the entity to share the PHI.
Public Health Surveillance
The acquisition, use, retention, and transmission of data about the population’s health that supports essential functions of the public health system.
10th Amendment
Enables states to exercise all powers that are neither given to the federal government nor prohibited by the constitution.
Police Powers
The coercive powers of states to enact laws and promulgate regulations to protect the public health and to promote the common good.
4th Amendment
US constitution’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
Civil Commitment Order
An order by the state which confines an individual in a medical facility for a specific period of time.
What are the human rights principles?
Freedom, Equality, Equal protection under the law, and the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of themself and family.
What is social justice?
What is fair, equitable, and appropriate treatment in light of what is due or owed groups.
It requires that public health practitioners examine questions of how some groups face disproportionate risk of disease aka health disparities.
What are the fundamental causes of disease?
Environmental conditions, occupational exposures, genetics, or lifestyle factors.
Distributive Justice
The allocation of benefits.
Environmental Justice
The fair treatment of all people in the application of public health policy that reduces the disparity in the exposure to environmental contamination.
What are the steps in ethical decision making?
- analyzing the ethical issues
- evaluating the ethical dimensions of the various PH options
- providing justification for on particular PH action
Informed Consent
Required by the American Public Health Association Code of Ethics prior to public intervention.
What setting should informed consent be made in?
In a setting, that must be done under the absence of pressure or coercion.
What is the Belmont Report?
1974 by the Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects in Biomedical and Behavioral Research.
Set forth 3 ethnical principles
What are the 3 ethnical principles of the Belmont Report?
- Respect for persons – autonomous people w/ consent
- Beneficence – protecting the well-being of participants and benefits of research are greater than the risks.
- Justice – Are benefits and burdens distributed fairly and do affected groups have agency?
Which -ism concepts are included in ethical theories for public health interventions?
Utilitarianism, communitarianism, and liberalism.
Utilitarianism
Promotes the goal of the “greatest good for the greatest number” with less concern for individual rights than for social benefit.
Communitarianism
Theory that individuals are inseparable from community life and that no one person and no one community can ever be completely self-determining.
Liberalism
Focus on individual rights and freedom of choice.
What is essential to sustainable public health policy?
Public health trust – and it is important to avoid unnecessary command or force without reason to ensure public health trust.
What is essential to public health professionalism?
Fiduciary duty to truth-telling and transparency.
What is priority setting in the context of health planning?
It is when public health departments engage with the community in decisions about allocation of scarce resources. This is important when there are conflicting beliefs and views on an intervention or where public funding should be allocated.
