Synthesis and summary

Écrit synthétisant ou résumant une production scientifique (de l'INSPQ ou d'ailleurs) et dans lequel les connaissances scientifiques sont adaptées de manière à les rendre accessibles et compréhensibles à des publics généraux ou spécialisés.

Health Inequalities and Intersectionality

Intersectionality is a way to think about and act upon social inequality and discrimination. It offers a promising approach to these issues within public policy and within public health. This briefing note briefly explains intersectionality and explores the potential of an intersectional approach to reducing health inequalities.1

Work in the field of public health has recognized for some time that the social location2 of…

Synthesis and summary

Introduction to Public Health Ethics 2: Philosophical and Theoretical Foundations

In this second1 of three briefing notes2 on public health ethics, we provide an overview of various philosophical and theoretical perspectives that have informed the development, evolution, and application of public health ethics throughout its short history. We believe it is important for public health practitioners to understand these ideas because they inform, either explicitly or implicitly, ethical decision making in public…

Synthesis and summary

The Principle of Reciprocity: How Can it Inform Public Health and Healthy Public Policies? – Summary

This paper provides a very short summary of a longer paper of the same name. The longer work, including full references, is available online at: http://www.ncchpp.ca/docs/2014_Ethique_Reciprocity_En.pdf.

Whether considered as a value or formulated as a principle to guide actions, reciprocity is commonly appealed to in public health to help ensure that certain obligations due to others – or to be expected from…

Synthesis and summary

Methods of Economic Evaluation: What are the Ethical Implications for Healthy Public Policy?

Decision making in healthy public policy,1 as in all policy areas, increasingly involves taking economic efficiency into consideration. Efficiency is the extent to which sought-after benefits can be obtained for the lowest possible cost, and the tools that measure it are economic evaluations. Efficiency is, however, but one of the many possible criteria according to which policy options can be judged. There is a range of other values and objectives that we may…

Synthesis and summary

Introduction to Public Health Ethics 3: Frameworks for Public Health Ethics

The first document in this series of briefing notes began with the observation that public health practitioners often struggle with ethical decisions in their practice but may not have relevant tools and resources to deal with these challenges. An assumption underlying this third paper is that by providing public health practitioners and decision makers with some guidance about practical public health ethics frameworks, they will be supported in making difficult ethical decisions that are……

Synthesis and summary

Selected Tools to Facilitate the Integration of Health in All Policies

The intent of this briefing note is to introduce some tools developed in recent years to facilitate the integration of health issues into the decision-making processes of sectors whose primary concern is not population health. It is not the product of a comprehensive review of the various support instruments for health-related decision making, but rather a review of tools associated with the HiAP approach that have been the subject of publications. Most of them are aimed at the municipal…

Synthesis and summary

Solidarity in Public Health Ethics and Practice: Its Conceptions, Uses and Implications

Increasingly, the concept of solidarity is being brought into discussion as one of the principles and values that should guide the ethical practices of public health actors.1 Reflecting on ethical issues specific to solidarity as it relates to public health practice appears worthwhile because solidarity is a concept that first and foremost concerns groups or communities of people. Viewed from this perspective, solidarity is a value that, for some authors, seems…

Synthesis and summary

Introduction to Public Health Ethics 1: Background

A public health ethics must begin with recognition of the values at the core of public health, not a modification of values used to guide other kinds of health care interactions (Baylis, Kenny, & Sherwin, 2008, p. 199).

Public health practitioners have long grappled with ethical issues in their practice but, until recently, there have been few relevant ethics frameworks that take into account the values base of public health.1 Historically, those…

Synthesis and summary

Pan-Canadian meeting on Health in All Policies (HiAP): Québec City, October 9, 2019 - Report

Health in All Policies (HiAP) is an increasingly important approach for systematically addressing the social determinants of health at all levels of government. HiAP refers to “an approach to public policies across sectors that systematically takes into account the health implications of decisions, seeks synergies, and avoids harmful health impacts in order to improve population health and health equity”.

In Canada, HiAP is on the radar of several governments, organizations and…

Synthesis and summary

An Ethics Framework for Analyzing Paternalism in Public Health Policies and Interventions

The purpose of this document is to equip public health actors to conduct an ethical analysis of policies that are said to be paternalistic. It aims to provide the conceptual tools needed to identify paternalistic policies and assess the ethical burden with which they may be associated. The document also offers practitioners a clear and structured approach intended to guide ethical deliberation about paternalistic policies.

Paternalism in a nutshell Some examples of policies called…
Synthesis and summary