Fairness in Public Health Ethics: How Bias Influences the Delivery of Healthcare

Social workers, case managers, and counselors are often involved in efforts to change unjust social systems or to help clients interpret these systems so they can make the decisions in their best interest. To carry out this important role, these same professionals must be discerning about the information being presented. This requires an understanding of how bias impacts individual, organizational, and societal decision making. Unconscious bias is the result of automatic associations made without awareness, intention, or control. In part, unconscious bias is thought to be the result of the human brain attempting to make sense of billions of pieces of information, which need to be organized and accessible to be useful to a human being. Confoundingly, unconscious bias is often found to be in direct opposition to what an individual believes to be true of their conscious values and belief systems. When bias is unmitigated on a personal level or on a systemic level, it can result in health and social service care delivery to individuals or populations who benefit in ways that are unmerited while other individuals or populations are harmed in ways that are unjust. This course will examine the ethics of public health, the process of how unconscious bias develops, as well as examine its potentially positive and negative influences on fairness in public health. The presentation will draw from ethically challenging public health efforts that have been influenced by unconscious bias. Moreover, this presentation will explore the ethical frameworks intended to support public health along with how bias can undermine ethical safeguards and standards. Finally, this presentation provides participants with tools to advance professional practice by challenging personal and/or systemic bias when evaluating public health campaigns and initiatives for bias which could lead to injustice for marginalized populations.