discussion and two responses
We’ve covered a lot in this class that I hope you’ll find useful, whether you end up working in the field of global health or not. For this DQ, please identify something (or some things) you learned in this course that you think you might use in the future and how you think they might help.
learned in this course:
1. Find and debunk a myth about COVID-19 or another emerging infectious disease. Use evidence and epidemiological reasoning to refute incorrect claims, and be sure to be clear about which issues are definitely wrong, and which issues are more uncertain.
2. Global health presents a fraught ethical landscape, especially for people from wealthy countries who want to help those most in need (often in low and middle income countries, though we obviously have huge swathes of people in need right here in the US as well).
One widely-used approach to thinking about biomedical ethics (which you saw in last week’s reading) is based on four basic principles:Beneficence (doing good / providing benefits), Non-maleficence (“do no harm”),Respect for autonomy (allowing people to make informed decisions), and Justice (fairness).
3.If you’ve been paying attention to the news about COVID-19, you’ve probably heard a lot about one particular outbreak investigation tool, namely contact tracing.
Contact tracing is pretty much what you’d expect from the name: It means tracking down all the people that an infected person came into contact with when they may have been contagious. For a disease like COVID-19 that can be spread before a person is showing symptoms, you’d probably also want to track down all the people those initial contacts came into contact with, as well.
It can be a massive undertaking! When we’re not engaged in social distancing, we come into contact with tons of people every day–often without even knowing who they are (think: people standing in line with you at Starbucks).
For your initial DQ response, find a global health program that interests you and consider it in light of these four principles. Do any of these principles raise any issues about the design and execution of the global health program? Are there aspects of the program that do particularly well in addressing one or more of these principles? How might the program be modified to address ethical weaknesses or enhance ethical strengths?
A post of approximately 200-350 words
Your initial response and follow-on discussion posts should cite evidence from sources such as journal articles, reports by governmental and non-governmental organizations, news articles, and / or class lectures. Personal correspondence with global health practitioners or personal experience may also be used, provided that other forms of evidence are also presented. You may choose whatever citation style you are most comfortable with.
Write two substantive posts in response to other students’ initial responses and cite appropriate evidence to support your ideas (details below). Substantive posts do more than say, “I agree,” or “I disagree.” They add new evidence and new insight to the discussion. Follow-on posts should generally be 100-250 words long, but shorter or longer responses are acceptable as long as they make a significant contribution to the week’s discussion.
