Training Details

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

Our Hidden Biases
Purpose:
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.
Learning Objectives:
  1. Explore the ethical frameworks which support systems of public health;
  2. Understand what implicit bias is and how it can influence public health; and
  3. Apply frameworks through critical thinking when evaluating public health campaigns and initiatives.
Event Cost:

$45.00 / 3 ETHICS CEUs for Counselors and Social Workers

Event Information:

ETHICS

Webinar- Live via ZOOM

Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2023
Time: 9:00 am – 12:15 pm
Presenter:  Amy VanDyke, MSW, LSW, PhD

Cost $45.00 / 3 ETHICS CEUs for
Counselors and Social Workers

About the Presenter(s):

Amy VanDyke, MSW, LSW, PhD

Dr. VanDyke earned a Master’s degree in clinical social work from the University of Pittsburgh and a PhD in Ethics from Duquesne University, also located in Pittsburgh. Dr. VanDyke currently serves as the VP of Programs for Catholic Social Services of Columbus. She has over two decades of program design and implementation experience both in social services and in ethics. Dr. VanDyke is a member of National Association of Social Workers (NASW), The American Society of Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH), the European Society for the Philosophy and History in Medicine (ESPMH). She is an international speaker on ethics having made peer reviewed presentations in 6 countries and throughout the United States. Dr. VanDyke maintains teaching associations with the University of Pittsburgh and through the school of social work at the Ohio State University.