Relational Personhood, Social Justice and the Common Good: Catholic Contributions toward a Public Health Ethics.

Worldwide, there is renewed public and political attention focused on public health fueled by the globally explosive H1N1 pandemic. Pandemic planning emerged as a major area for public action in the absence of an overarching ethics framework appropriate for the community and population focus of public health. Baylis, Sherwin, and Kenny propose relational personhood and relational solidarity as core values for a public health ethics. The Catholic faith tradition makes three useful contributions in support of a relational ethic: first, a religious ontology that aligns with the view that human persons are inherently relational; second, a coherent account of the requisite social and communal ideals and structures that this belief demands; and third, inspiration and motivation for the attitudes and actions that are required in response to a relational ontology.

Information technology and hospice palliative care: social, cultural, ethical and technical implications in a rural setting.

OBJECTIVE: There is a need to better understand the specific settings in which health information technology (HIT) is used and implemented. Factors that will determine the successful implementation of HIT are context-specific and often reside not at the technical level but rather at the process and people level. This paper provides the results of a needs assessment for HIT to support hospice palliative care (HPC) delivery in rural settings. METHODS: Roundtable discussions using the nominal group technique were done to identify priority issues regarding HIT usage to support rural HPC delivery. Qualitative content analysis was then used to identify sociotechnical themes from the roundtable data. RESULTS: Twenty priority issues were identified at the roundtable session. Content analysis grouped the priority issues into one central theme and five supporting themes to form a sociotechnical framework for patient-centered care in rural settings. CONCLUSION: There are several sociotechnical themes and associated issues that need to be considered prior to implementing HIT in rural HPC settings. Proactive evaluation of these issues can enhance HIT implementation and also help to make ethical aspects of HIT design more explicit.