Document Type
Article
Journal Title
The Lancet Regional Health - Americas
Publication Date
2022
Volume
16
Abstract
Communicating public health guidance is key to mitigating risk during disasters and outbreaks, and ethical guidance on communication emphasizes being fully transparent. Yet, communication during the pandemic has sometimes been fraught, due in part to practical and conceptual challenges around being transparent. A particular challenge has arisen when there was both evolving scientific knowledge on COVID-19 and reticence to acknowledge that resource scarcity concerns were influencing public health recommendations. This essay uses the example of communicating public health guidance on masking in the United States to illustrate ethical challenges of developing and conveying public health guidance under twin conditions of uncertainty and resource scarcity. Such situations require balancing two key principles in public health ethics: the precautionary principle and harm reduction. Transparency remains a bedrock value to guide risk communication, but optimizing transparency requires consideration of additional ethical values in developing and implementing risk communication strategies.
DOI Link
ISSN
2667193X
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Lowe, Abigail; Voo, Teck Chuan; Lee, Lisa M.; Dineen Gillespie, Kelly K.; Feig, Christy; Ferdinand, Alva O.; Mohapatra, Seema; Brett-Major, David; and Wynia, Matthew K., "Uncertainty, Scarcity and Transparency: Public Health Ethics and Risk Communication in a Pandemic" (2022). Journal Articles: Epidemiology. 170.
https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/coph_epidem_articles/170