Public Policies, Law and Bioethics: A Framework for Producing Public Health Policy Across the European Union (original) (raw)

What Is EU Public Health and Why? Explaining the Scope and Organization of Public Health in the European Union

Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law

Public health is notoriously difficult to define, and that is the case for public health in the European Union as much as other political systems. In this article, the authors try to identify the actual scope and meaning of public health as it is institutionalized in the EU political system. Using a mixture of historical policy and legal analysis, the authors show how the evolution of the institutional space called public health in the EU has been shaped by the EU's distinctive constitutional nature, its focus on regulation, and the legacy of its focus on market making as well as the preferences of its political leaders. The European Union does have an increasingly large space named “public health,” in which health ministers, the health directorate-general, and invocation of its public health treaty article 168 can be found, as well as a much broader and older area of activities justified by the need to manage adverse health consequences of market-making policies in other areas ...

Proposing a Code of Ethics for Public Health Professionals in Europe

South Eastern European Journal of Public Health

Context: Public health practitioners are involved in a wide array of contexts. Local and national government public health agencies; domestic and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); and academic institutions are just a few examples of the settings where public health practitioners work. Acting ethically and meeting ethical commitments in a practical and transdisciplinary endeavor as complicated as public health necessitates careful consideration. Ethical practice ensures that public health institutions work properly and that individual public health practitioners maintain their integrity. There is little debate about the importance of ethics in public health professional practice and, as a result, the necessity for a corresponding professional code of ethics. Policy Options: Only an US-American code of public health ethics has been created so far. Since ethical considerations in public health are heavily dependent in contexts, the aim of this document is to initiat...