Several foundational documents of bioethics mention the special obligation researchers have to vulnerable research participants. However, the treatment of vulnerability offered by these documents often relies on enumeration of vulnerable groups rather than an analysis of the features that make such groups vulnerable. Recent attempts in the scholarly literature to lend philosophical weight to the […]
There has been a dramatic rise in the scale and scope of collaborative global health research. A number of structural and scientific factors explain this growth and there has been much discussion of these in the literature. Little, if any, attention has been paid, however, to the factors identified by scientists and other research actors […]
In his recent commentary, Gorik Ooms argues that “denying that researchers, like all humans, have personal opinions … drives researchers’ personal opinion underground, turning global health science into unconscious dogmatism or stealth advocacy, avoiding the crucial debate about the politics and underlying normative premises of global health.” These ‘unconscious’ dimensions of global health are as […]
Global health research partnerships are increasingly taking the form of consortia of institutions from high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries that undertake programs of research. These partnerships differ from collaborations that carry out single projects in the multiplicity of their goals, scope of their activities, and nature of their management. Although such consortia typically […]
The case for research to promote equity in health in resource poor contexts such as Malawi is compelling. In Malawi, nearly half of all the people with tuberculosis cannot afford to access free tuberculosis services. In this scenario, there is a clear need to understand the multiple barriers poor women and men face in accessing […]
This paper addresses the distinctive nature of participatory action research (PAR) in relation to ethical review requirements. As a framework for conducting research and reducing health disparities, PAR is gaining increased attention in community and public health research. As a result, PAR researchers and members of Research Ethics Boards could benefit from an increased understanding […]
Blog: Molyneux S. et al (2017) Ethics in health systems research is ‘everybody’s business’, Health Systems Global This blog provides a summary of some of the discussions related to ethics at the Fourth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research which was held in 2016 in Vancouver. It explores: the links between health systems research and […]
Northern voices dominate Global Health discussions. How can it be acceptable that these groups continue to dominate in deciding what problems we think about in Global Health and how we approach them? The most excellent research study or Global Health program risks failure unless it is informed by and contextualized by the people close to […]
Concern for human vulnerability seems to be at the heart of bioethical inquiry, but the concept of vulnerability is under-theorized in the bioethical literature. The aim of this article is to show why bioethics needs an adequately theorized and nuanced conception of vulnerability. We first review approaches to vulnerability in research ethics and public health […]
Global health research is essentially a normative undertaking: we use it to propose policies that ought to be implemented. To arrive at a normative conclusion in a logical way requires at least one normative premise, one that cannot be derived from empirical evidence alone. But there is no widely accepted normative premise for global health, […]