2.N. Round table: COVID-19, ethics, and the many publics in public health policy and practice
Authors:   Organised by: EUPHA-ETH, UK Faculty of Public Health,   Chair persons: Ilaria Tocco Tussardi (Italy), Farhang Tahzib (EUPHA-ETH)
Published: October 2021

The term public health is well known. However, there are many meanings and competing ideas about what public health practice, public health policies and public health services are, should be or could be. There are different understandings of public health's main concepts (e.g., health protection and health promotion), diverse underlying basic normative assumptions (e.g., regarding paternalism or justice), and competing views on how public health policies should be developed (e.g., through top down or deliberative/participatory approaches).

Different theories and ideologies frame the debate. They refer to the value of privacy and spheres of personal decision-making, the image of human beings as social or political animals, and the role of the liberal-democratic state. Those theories also reflect different historical developments and institutionalized experiences underlying differences in “political cultures” and related understandings of “public”, and consequently, of “public health”. However, we as a “public health community” do not often reflect on the different understandings of “public” in “public health”. E.g., what is the meaning of “public” and what is “public” about public health services? The need to make and evaluate COVID-19 public health policies and practices underlines the necessity for an ongoing reflection to identify good answers. Against this background, the workshop addresses the following questions: What different kinds of understanding of key concepts of “public health” - including the concept of “public” itself - underlie different kinds of interventions, measures and policies to tackle the ongoing public health emergency / the Covid 19 pandemic? What are the ethical lessons from the pandemic and implications for public health policies and activities? The roundtable workshop will start with a key contribution by John Coggon (Chair in Law and Director of Centre for law and Society, University of Bristol), reflecting some core messages of his seminal book “What Makes Health Public?” and recent research on the issue in the light of COVID-19-policies. Together with three further panelists key messages and reflections will be discussed from the different disciplines of political science, ethics, social science and policy / practitioner perspectives, drawing out implications for policy, research and practice. This will be followed by reflections and discussion with the workshop participants and their reflections and insights on these critical questions.

Speakers/Panelists

John Coggon University of Bristol, Bristol, UK Kai Michelsen Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Fulda, Germany Peter Schröder-Bäck University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration in North Rhine-Westphalia, Aachen, Germany Sadie Regmi Public Health Registrar, University College London, London, UK

Key messages

In theory, different conceptions of the normativity of the key term “public” lay different foundations for the role of the state and the scope of the policies initialised to advance PH aims. In practice, PH policies are strongly driven by political and economic interests of “the ruling classes”, but modified by civil society and institutionalised historical experiences.