Discussion Week 7 Bioethics
Discussion Week 7 Bioethics
Generally speaking, bioethics helps determine what is responsible by considering four key principles: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. The principle of autonomy is about respecting people and their free will. Beneficence and nomaleficence are two sides of the same coin: doing what is helpful, and not doing what is harmful. Justice, in this context, has to do with being fair in giving out both benefits and risks.
_Using your own words, answer the following questions:
1- How these models relate to one another varies with each circumstance.
2- In your personal opinion which model may be the most important.
Models-
1- Ethics of Care Model **
2- Narrative Ethics Model
3- Complementary/ Alternative Medicine (CAM).
– Use the APA format
-Utilize more than three references to answer the questions
-Your answers must be at least 2 paragraphs to each question
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Some people have longer and healthier lives.
These differences are closely associated with social characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, location, and socioeconomic status.
Knowledge and understanding of health inequalities has increased.
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What are Health Inequities?
What is the definition of health?
Narrow definitions focus on the absence of disease.
More expansive definitions of health may include happiness, freedom from disability, quality of life, and the capacity to lead a socially meaningful and economically productive life.
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Assessing Health Status
There are many ways to assess health status.
The most common health indicators are mortality, survival, life expectancy, disease incidence, and disease prevalence.
Composite measures such as DALY and QALY can be used to compare difference health conditions. Discussion Week 7 Bioethics
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Assessing Health Status
There are many ways to assess health status.
More expansive measures may include physiological indicators of overall health, health status, a sense of well-being, and social connectedness and productivity.
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Measures of Health Care
Discussions of health inequalities may also utilize measures of health care, including rates of diagnosis, treatment, cost, insurance coverage, quality, survival, symptom reduction, or some other health outcome measure.
Health inequalities should be distinguished from inequalities in health care.
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Inequality
A health inequality is a descriptive term referring to either to the total variation in health status across individuals within a population, or a difference in average or total health between two or more populations.
It involves comparing population averages.
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Health Inequities
Health inequity is a normative term that refers to a difference that is judged to be morally unacceptable.
While all health inequities are by definition health inequalities, not all health inequalities are health inequities.
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Health Inequities
Determining whether a particular inequality (or class of inequalities) constitutes an inequity requires a moral judgment based on a priori beliefs about justice, fairness, and the distribution of social resources.
Relative social position of different populations assists defining inequity.
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Health Inequities
Rawls’ difference principle is used when addressing health inequities.
Social justice can indicate that a given population has disproportionately suffered from international military and economic exploitation, inequitable distribution of economic resources, or historical patterns of race-based economic and social injustice.
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Health Inequities
Drawbacks of using a population approach include:
The a priori identification of disadvantaged populations may be contentious or arbitrary.
Neglect of situations in which a genuinely unjust distribution of health may benefit those in socially superior positions.
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Health Inequities
A common definition of health inequity focuses on the causes and consequences of a given health inequality.
A systematic health inequality is one that consistently affects two or more populations and is not the result of random variation.
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Health Inequities
Avoidability has several components.
Health inequities must be technically avoidable ; a successful means of reducing the inequality must exist.
They must be financially avoidable; sufficient resources exist to rectify the inequality.
They must be morally avoidable rectifying the inequality must not violate some other social value, such as liberty or distributive justice.
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Health Inequities
Unjust cause is also a criterion. It can include:
Health-damaging behavior where the degree of choice of lifestyles is severely restricted.
Exposure to unhealthy, stressful living and working conditions.
Inadequate access to essential health and other public services. Discussion Week 7 Bioethics
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Health Inequities
Problems with the cause definition include:
Patterns are not morally wrong.
We choose to categorize patterns as unjust.
Justice when high-risk health behaviors are “freely chosen” is a topic of considerable debate.
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Health Inequities
The most significant problem with this definition is that many health problems have multi-causal etiologies.
Another issue is that an inequality might be designated as morally wrong because it is part of a morally wrong situation.
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Measurement
Determining whether a specific situation is inequitable requires that the health status of at least two populations be measured and compared.
One must determine which populations to compare and
The most appropriate measures that should be used in comparing these populations.
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Measurement
For analysis, populations should differ in ways that are socially or morally important.
On should establish a comparison group that serves explicitly as a reference against which one or more populations are compared.
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Measurement
Criteria for a comparisons group could be:
Total population average.
The best-off population.
The most socially advantaged population.
Some independently-defined target rate.
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Measurement
A wide variety of statistical measures of inequality are available, from simple averages to sophisticated measures of total inequality.
The absolute difference is a number resulting from subtraction of the numerical measure of one group’s health status from another. Discussion Week 7 Bioethics