Ethics, Equity, and Gender

A key priority of our research in health systems is to ensure and support social justice measures alongside health impacts, particularly for marginalized communities. We work to mitigate inequalities in access to health services and promote health equity.

In our research, service, and teaching, we emphasize the need to understand and address a wide range of ethical challenges relevant to public health practice and research in low- and middle-income countries. Our faculty study how to maximize the benefit of public health research and practice, while developing appropriate risk mitigation strategies, especially when our work involves vulnerable populations. Faculty also partner with institutions globally to support the development and operation of ethics training programs and seek to improve collective understandings for what it means to be respectful and effective health system researchers and public health professionals.

Our faculty also specialize in gender and health systems, studying how gendered power relations create inequities within different areas of the health system and how the intersection of social stratifiers—such as gender, age, race and ethnicity—leads to different experiences of disadvantage and marginalization within the health system. Our research in this domain encompasses both clients using the health system as well as those working in the health system.