News14th January 2025

Nuffield Council on Bioethics collaborates on the design of a Rapid Ethical Assessment tool

In 2023, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (NCOB) began working in partnership with international experts on a project to explore how ethical advice is sought and utilised during times of crisis. Today, we welcome Dr Marija Antanavičiūtė on a 12-month secondment to lead on the development of a Rapid Ethical Assessment tool.

The ESRC funded “Ethics & Expertise” project (2023-2026) is examining how ethics advice is provided to Governments and policymakers during times of crisis. We want to understand what this means for policy decision-making and ultimately, how this influences outcomes for citizens. The project is comparing examples in the UK, Germany and Australia to identify opportunities for improvement. And it has an overarching ambition to formulate new tools and recommendations to improve institutional capacity and agility, strategic thinking, and pluralistic forms of expertise.

So far, the NCOB has been working with project partners in the Universities of Birmingham, Bielefeld, Sheffield, Melbourne, Queensland, and Karlshochschule International to coordinate three witness seminars in the UK and more than 60 interviews with policymakers and ethics advisors across the UK, Germany and Australia. These have assisted us in our understanding of:

1. How ethical advice for governments is organised.
2. How ethical dilemmas are navigated by experts and publics.
3. What is known about how and which ethics advice is used by governments in times of crisis.
4. What can be learned from this to support value-based judgments in policy decision-making.

The insights gathered thus far have largely aligned with information gleaned through the NCOB’s ethical lens project. The projects may differ in their timeframes, with the ethical lens focused on long term choices and E&E targeting acute crisis decisions, but both projects have a strong commitment to strengthen the utilisation of ethical consideration in policy and provide policymakers with the tools they need to do this.

Now, in a bid to build upon these common themes, Policy and Research Fellow Dr Marija Antanavičiūtė, based at University of Birmingham, has joined the NCOB for a 12-month secondment where she will work with our Horizon Scanning & Foresight team to design, test and develop a rapid ethics assessment tool.

The tool will enable civil servants and policymakers to conduct ethical assessments early in the policymaking process as well as whenever a change or decision is needed (i.e during times of crisis). It will support the utilisation of diverse forms of expertise, assisting policy leads in their identification of key value-based decisions and understanding of the trade-offs and potential harms present in different contexts.

Our research can support policymakers to access ethics expertise and make better decisions about important ethical questions, a crucial component of embedding ethics in policymaking”.

Dr Marija Antanavičiūtė, Policy and Research Fellow seconded to the NCOB