Ethics and Public Health Data

Question: Discuss about theEthics and Public Health Data. Answer: Introduction In line with its mandate of providing health care services to the public, the government requires to use its agencies to carry out research and surveillance. This is quite significant because it helps in the collection of data used for detecting disease out breaks, prioritizing, implementing and monitoring public health programs (Thomas, 2014). Nevertheless, the collection of public data, which in many occasions involve private information, should be done in compliance with the national and international regulations. No matter how much important public health data is, its collection, storage, and usage should adhere to the ethical standards. The government agencies have a legal obligation to protect individual privacy and liberty especially for individually-identifiable data (Vayena, Mastroianni Kahn, 2012). The law guarantees each individual to voluntarily participate in a research, have power over the usage of their data and be protected from unnecessary revelation of the same to other unauthorized parties. Although pubic officials entrusted with the collection, storage and usage of the public health data are restricted from violating individual liberties, the law gives them a relief to reveal private information should it be necessary to do so. In such circumstances, it becomes ethically justifiable to disclose individual health information because, by doing so, the authorities are acting for the sake of common good (Thomas, 2014). It can be right if individual privacy is contravened to avail information to be used for achieving a noble public health objective such as monitoring, responding to or identifying a disability, death or disease outbreak in the community. References Thomas, L. (2014) Pandemics of the future: Disease surveillance in real time. Surveillance andSociety. 12: 287200. Vayena, E., Mastroianni, A. Kahn, J. (2012) Ethical issues in health research with novel online sources. Am J Public Health 102: 222530.