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AJPH First Look, published online ahead of print Jan 31, 2006
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March 2006, Vol 96, No. 3 | American Journal of Public Health 447-451
© 2006 American Public Health Association
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2005.065706

OPPORTUNITIES AND DEMANDS IN PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEMS

Toward Ethical Review of Health System Transformations

Norman Daniels, PhD

The author is with the Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass.

Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Norman Daniels, PhD, Department of Population and International Health, Bldg 1, Rm 1205, Harvard School of Public Health, 665 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115 (e-mail: ndaniels{at}hsph.harvard.edu).

Efforts to transform health systems constitute social experiments on a population. Like clinical research, they deploy measures that are unproven in the context of the reform, and they often impose significant risks on some people in order to achieve a social goal: the improvement of health delivery.

The rationale for proactively evaluating clinical experimentation on human subjects also applies to these social experiments. We used the "benchmarks of fairness" methodology to illustrate the elements such an evidence-based review should encompass, leaving open the question of who should perform it. The review must include the ethical objectives of reform, namely, an integrated approach to equity, accountability, and efficiency; the fit between measures taken and these objectives; and the governance of the reform.




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