Log in
[Key: Bold: text from REF guidelines; Bold italic/italic: emphasis; Superscript: references in sections 3 and 5]
Research by Chadwick has influenced research protocols and policies regarding the ethical consequences of collecting DNA for research. Her impact is most visible in the Personal Genome Project, and the work of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Human Genome Project and H3Africa. Her contributions to discussions and documents resulted in changes to how consent is gained from DNA donors. In particular, the changes address important issues that she raised regarding the practicality and acceptability of the undertakings made in current consent protocols about confidentiality and the future use of data. Chadwick's underpinning research claims relate to the fact that genetic information, and the attendant genetic technology, are derived from, and significant to, populations as a whole. She maintains that biotechnological advances are changing our ethical values, particularly regarding conflicts between personal interests and large-group needs. For her, practical ethics cannot apply normative ethical concepts and theories arising from abstract philosophical reasoning. Rather, the conceptual and theoretical structures themselves must be developed through philosophical engagement with the scientific details of the project. Her collaboration with bodies responsible for the protocols of consent reflects a `bottom-up' moral philosophy rather than the traditional `top-down' theory-driven approach.
Durham University's Centre for Public Policy and Health (CPPH) has worked closely with the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Regional Office for Europe to help design the European Action Plan for Strengthening Public Health Capacities and Services. The European Action Plan (EAP) draws extensively on three major CPPH research projects on the nature and governance of the public health system in England. The EAP, endorsed by all 53 WHO Member States in September 2012, is a main pillar for the implementation of the WHO's policy framework — Health 2020 — also endorsed by Member States.
Research at Lancaster has had significant, cumulative impacts on public sector thinking about, and approaches to, public involvement in health policy, practice and research locally, nationally and internationally. As a result the public in the UK and internationally is now significantly better engaged in influencing health policy and practice, in particular those from disadvantaged communities, leading to improved health and wellbeing, and enhanced employability. This research shaped the network of NHS Patient and Public Involvement Forums established in England 2003-2007, and reframed how social exclusion and vulnerability were addressed in the report of the Global Commission on The Social Determinants of Health (Marmot report) and the WHO EURO Health 2020 Strategy.
An AHRC and ESRC-funded Edinburgh research collaboration with the Argentinian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovative Production (MOST), from 2007-2012, served as a key driver in the formation of regulatory structures, norms, knowledge and social understanding, helping to overcome state non-intervention in the regulation of regenerative medicine. As a direct result of engagement with the stakeholders in law/policy, medical and scientific communities, the research exposed a strong appetite for top-down legal intervention. This culminated in the first-ever model law presented by the MOST to the Argentine legislature (Congress) in 2013.
Research in Southampton Law School's Health Ethics and Law (HEAL) network has made a significant contribution to improving the way in which ethical issues in health are addressed in the UK and further afield. HEAL members' specialist research has informed several Department of Health policy documents and policy makers, as well as the strategies of organisations governing bioethics. Their recommendations have influenced professional guidelines for clinicians and lawyers, defining and underpinning good practice so as to protect and benefit service users. Increased understanding of ethical issues in health among the wider public has been promoted through high-profile media coverage.
Research conducted at the University of Surrey focused on the problems caused by noise from wind farms, smell from sewage farms, industrial emissions, and other forms of environmental pollution and how the quality of public health could be improved through better regulation. The research impacted in the following ways:
1) Changes to Government policies such as codes of practice and guidance notes; and
2) Changes to enforcement procedures of environmental health officers.
The Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS) is a pioneering study, combining census, civil registration, health and education data (administrative data). It has established an approach that allows the legal and ethical use of personal, sensitive information by maintaining anonymity within the data system. This approach has become a model for the national data linkage systems that are now being established across the UK. The SLS has also enabled policy analysts to monitor key characteristics of the Scottish population in particular health inequalities (alerting policy makers to Scotland's poor position within Europe), migration (aiding economic planning) and changing tenure patterns (informing house building decisions). Finally, the study has become fully embedded in Scotland's National Statistical agency, allowing it to produce new informative statistical series.
Lancaster research has highlighted the pervasive health inequalities and inadequate services experienced by people with learning disabilities (LD). Our 2005 report commissioned by the Department of Health (DH) proposed the establishment of a specialist LD observatory for England. This proposal was taken up by a government-commissioned independent inquiry and accepted.
The same team is one of three partners who, through a competitive tender process, have since 2010 been operating the first specialist LD public health observatory in the world. The observatory collects, analyses and summarises health information to improve the data available to DH and other stakeholders thereby improving the health of people with LD.
The governance of information and its sharing significantly influences legal decision-making in institutional contexts. This research contrasts this with the social benefits and political desirability of making stakeholders who are the subjects of that information (or intended beneficiaries) participants in decision-making by making them partners in information governance and usage (Grace and Taylor, 2013, and Information Governance Review, 2013).
Through ethical and legal analysis this research seeks to understand the critical factors in practitioner decision-making and in structures of governance (including regulation). The specific impacts of this research have been in the fields of healthcare, and the management and governance of patient information in the NHS in research and commissioning contexts - specifically, the individual rights to reasonable objections, where this is practicable, for patients who feel that NHS healthcare research projects infringe their sense of privacy and confidentiality.
Professor Angus Dawson's research in public health ethics has
a) had a direct, global impact on public health policies, frameworks and interventions
b) contributed to improving the quality of decision-making about public health interventions.
His research has influenced the World Health Organisation's policy on the treatment of tuberculosis, Ontario's public health policy, the US Federal Agency's policy on the preparedness and response to public health emergencies, and a British Medical Association position paper on universal childhood Hepatitis B vaccination. Dawson's research has sought to define the nature of public health, the boundaries of ethical deliberation, and has introduced values, such as the `common good', to supplement the previous narrow range of values that tended to focus on individuals.