Ethics in Public Health Practice in India

This edited volume draws on ten original contributions that locate ethics at the centre-stage of public health practice. The essays explicate ethical issues, challenges, deliberations and resolutions covering a broad canvas of public health practice including policies, programmes, research, training and advocacy. The contributors are academics and practitioners in varying roles and long-standing engagement with public health in diverse settings within India. Their expertise in disciplines range from anthropology, sociology, health communications, gender studies, economics, epidemiology, social work and medicine. Their chapters deal with dimensions of ethical dilemmas that can rarely be defined and contained within ethical guidelines and protocols alone. Instead, they throw light on the associated factors, value systems and contexts in which such complexities occur and require response or redressal. This volume aims to articulate the growing awareness among practitioners that public health ethics is not merely an advanced grouping of possible problems and solutions. It hopes to facilitate robust platforms for dialogue and debate on the subject through the lenses of these contributions. The book is conceptualized to reach broader audiences such as public health practitioners and researchers in several roles within Government health systems, NGOs/Grass root organizations/CSR initiatives/advocacy groups; as well as researchers in academic settings and facilitators involved in teaching ethics and imparting training for students and young practitioners of public health.

• public health rights and ethics
• coalitions on right to health care
• ethics in program design
• ethical principles in public health programs
• health interventions in sexual violence
• local participatory governance and health systems response
• public health ethics for non-public health programs
• qualitative research on health systems
• gender and health equity
• disadvantaged communities and public health ethics
• ethical issues related to reproductive technologies
• public health ethics in curricula

• School of Development, Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India

  Arima Mishra

• International Health Program, Curtin University, Perth, Australia

  Kalyani Subbiah

Arima Mishra is a Professor of Medical Anthropology and Public Health in Azim Premji University, Bangalore India.  Her research and teaching interests include social determinants of health and health equity, health system ethnography, public health ethics, maternal and child health and medical pluralism. She has published widely in national and international journals. She is the editor of Health, illness and medicine: Ethnographic Readings (2010), co-editor of Multiple voices and stories: Narratives of health and illness (2013) apart from guest editing special issues of Indian Anthropologist on Anthropology and Public Health (2013) and (co-editing) Global Public Health  on Critical ethnographies of health systems policies and practices (2014).  

Kalyani Subbiah has several years of experience in public health research, communication and teaching in India. Her work is committed to risk-reduction, accessibility to preventive measures and promotion of women’s health through ethical responsibility of programs, research and key functionaries in health systems. Kalyani is currently pursuing a PhD in International Health at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University, Australia, with the support of an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Policies and ethics