Model curricula in public health ethics

The provision of ethics instruction through formal courses and other avenues is a cornerstone of professional ethics in public health. Recent developments include the implementation of innovative ethics curricula in public health training programs in the United States and other countries, numerous ethics workshops and symposia at national and international public health meetings, and increasing opportunities for public health professionals to obtain continuing education on ethics.(1-4) Another recent development has been the National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandate for extramural research training programs to provide instruction on scientific integrity and ethical principles in research to trainees.(5,6) Despite the recent upsurge of interest in the inclusion of ethics instruction in public health curricula, schools of public health and other institutions that train public health professionals vary greatly in the depth of their attention to ethics. Moreover, existing ethics curricula in public health vary considerably in their form and content, even within individual disciplines such as epidemiology.(2,4,7) Although innovation and creativity in teaching methods are desirable, there are currently no national standards for adequate instruction in public health ethics. The thesis of this article is that schools of public health should provide basic instruction in ethics that is specifically tailored to meet the needs of public health students, and that model curricula in public health ethics are needed to assure this goal. Such curricula should have clearly specified and evaluable learning objectives and should take into account the diversity of public health students, disciplines, and graduate education programs. In the discussion that follows, a rationale for teaching public health ethics is provided along with some responses to possible questions.