Preventive medicine faces intense challenges today, ranging from rampant misinformation and disinformation to health disparities and inequity to applications of artificial intelligence in health ecosystems with unknown implications. What is the right course of action to address such issues, and what values and principles ought we apply?  Ethics seeks to answer these questions and provide guidance.

The ACPM Ethics Committee serves as an important compass for preventive medicine by helping to define our values as a specialty. It maintains and updates the preventive medicine Code of Ethics and advises the Board of Regents of important ethical issues confronting the specialty and the College. The Committee also plays a vital role for the College by ensuring ACPM policies and documents are ethical and consistent with our values and bylaws.

At the core of every significant public health decision there are questions about ethics. Implementing distributive justice when allocating scarce resources such as vaccines. Balancing individual autonomy versus the common good when implementing infectious disease control measures. Preserving privacy and data security when conducting disease surveillance. Examples such as these highlight the need for preventive medicine physicians and public health decision-makers to be well-versed in wrestling with difficult ethical questions so they may rise to the challenge.

If you would like to make an impact on the specialty and the College in deep and meaningful ways, consider joining your colleagues as a member of the Ethics Committee. Here, you can help shape the values of both our College and our specialty as we work to tackle the biggest issues in medicine and public health and offer guidance to our specialty’s leaders.

MAJ Hunter Jackson Smith, MD, MPH, MBE, FACPM
ACPM Ethics Committee
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