Public Health Ethics: A Case in Environmental Health

In this webinar, co-presented by NCCHPP and NCCEH, participants discussed the evidence and ethics of a case involving radon.

Presenters:

• Anne-Marie Nicol, Environmental Health Scientist at the NCCEH
• Michael Keeling and Olivier Bellefleur, Research Officers at the NCCHPP 

The webinar, co-presented by NCCHPP and NCCEH on November 29, 2016, featured a case involving radon testing at daycares and highlighted both evidence and ethics. This webinar was developed primarily for public health inspectors, but was also intended to be of interest for a general audience. Our goal was to present the case and a brief discussion of the evidence regarding risk, remediation and some of the issues facing inspectors, parents, building owners and managers, not to mention homeowners and the general public. Then we turned our attention to considering the ethical issues raised by the case. To do this, we presented an ethics framework in order to guide ethical deliberation in which participants were able to:

• Identify ethical values and issues that are pertinent to the case,
• Consider how some conflicts may arise between values,
• Think about how to balance those conflicts in order to decide what to do.

The presentation includes several resources for further reading, including material about radon, more introductory material about public health ethics and links to several frameworks that can help make ethics more accessible for practitioners.