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Ethics support

Table of contents Home Program elements Locally driven collaborative projects Workshops Ethics support Student education and preceptor support Library services Knowledge exchange support Reports and resources The Exchange e-bulletin FAQ's Get involved Contact us

Public health encompasses a wide range of activities spanning research, surveillance, program evaluation and quality improvement among others. It is sometimes unclear what level of ethical oversight is needed for these activities. Public Health Ontario is developing ethics support services to assist public health practitioners with these issues as well as with ethics reviews. These services include:

• Ethics Advisory services
• Ethics education
• Common forms and tools
• Ethics review process and board
• Community of practice

April launch of ethics webinars and advisory service

PHO is pleased to announce a new webinar series, Ethics Now: Current Topics in Public Health

This monthly webinar series kicked off on Friday April 20, with guest speaker Diego Silva, doctoral candidate at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto. Future sessions will be held the last Friday of each month from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. For more information about the upcoming events, visit the event page. If you wish to suggest a topic or speaker, please email research@oahpp.ca.

As of April 1, 2012, an ethics advisory service previously only available to PHO staff, will also be available to public health units. PHO’s research ethics officer will be available to offer guidance in identifying and/or addressing ethical issues that may be associated with a public health initiative or in the development of local ethics support. The service offers advice only and is not a replacement for ethics review by a research ethics board (REB) or other governing body. Advice may be sought at any point in the planning or implementation of an evidence-generating initiative involving people, their information or their biological samples. Email responses will be provided within 3–6 business days. Meetings (by telephone or in person) can be scheduled for Tuesday mornings or Thursday afternoons. Please send advisory service requests to research@oahpp.ca.

PHO has developed a framework to guide the ethical conduct of evidence-generating public health initiatives. The framework interprets the Government of Canada’s Tri-Council Policy Statement 2, Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS 2) through a public health lens and provides ten questions to facilitate the systematic examination of issues, including appropriate consideration of the interests of all stakeholders. The questions emphasize the interrelatedness of the welfare of individuals and communities and the positive obligation to promote equity and reciprocity.

This framework has been developed by a working group of public health and ethics professionals and scholars in consultation with individuals representing a wide range of public health roles. The framework was released broadly as a discussion paper in June 2011, which generated tremendous feedback from public health practitioners and academics from across Ontario, Canada and the U.S. This feedback was used to inform the current version.

If you have any questions about the paper or the process, please contact research@oahpp.ca.