Research in global health emergencies: ethical issues

Michael Parker (Chair)

Michael Parker is the Director of the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities and the Ethox Centre at the University of Oxford. His main research interest is in the ethics of collaborative global health research. Together with partners at the Wellcome Africa and Asia Programmes based in Vietnam, Malawi, Thailand, Kenya, and South Africa he established the Global Health Bioethics Network which aims to conduct ethics research and build ethics capacity across the Africa and Asia Programmes. The Network is funded by a Wellcome Strategic Award

Sanjoy Bhattacharya

Sanjoy Bhattacharya is a Professor in the History of Medicine, Director of the Centre for Global Health Histories, and Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Histories at the University of York. He studied at the University of Delhi (India), Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (London, UK). He is a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator working on the history and contemporary workings of Primary Health Care and the provision of Universal Health Coverage in South Asia. Sanjoy also continues to work on the histories of the worldwide eradication of smallpox, and the migration, experiences and contribution of South Asian doctors in the UK’s National Health Service.

Karl Blanchet

Karl Blanchet is a Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva and Director of the Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action (CERAH) in Geneva. Karl currently works in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Jordan and Kenya.

Simon Caney

Simon Caney is a Council member, and a Professor in Political Theory, University of Warwick. His research interests are in contemporary political philosophy, and in particular global justice, environmental justice and responsibilities to future generations. He was formerly a member of the Council’s working party on Biofuels: ethical issues.

Emily Ying Yang Chan

Emily Ying Yang Chan is a Professor and Assistant Dean (Development) at the Faculty of Medicine, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Director of the Collaborating Centre for Oxford University and CUHK for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response (CCOUC); Visiting Professor, Oxford University Nuffield Department of Medicine; and Visiting Scholar, FXB Center, Harvard University. Her research interests include disaster and humanitarian medicine, climate change and health, global and planetary health, remote rural health, Human Health Security and Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (H-EDRM), and ethnic minority health. In addition to publishing widely on these issues in international peer-reviewed journals, Emily has also had extensive experience as a frontline emergency relief practitioner across 20 countries during the mid-1990s. She is currently Co-chairperson, WHO Thematic Platform for H-EDRM Research Network and a member of the Asia Science Technology and Academia Advisory Group (ASTAAG).

Beatriz da Costa Thomé

Beatriz da Costa Thomé is a paediatrician trained at the Medical School of the Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil, with a Masters in Public Health with focus on Global Health from the University of Washington. Previous roles have included the provision of technical support for HIV research in Kenya and Mozambique (based in ICAP, Columbia University); work as an investigator in vaccine trials in Brazil and as a Clinical Research and Development manager at Butantan Institute, São Paulo, with focus on developing vaccines for the national public health system. Currently affiliated to the Preventive Medicine Department of the Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil, teaching Epidemiology and mentoring Medical students.

Philippe Guérin

Philippe Guérin is a medical doctor specialising in public health. He is currently Professor of Epidemiology and Global Health at the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, University of Oxford, and leads an international project, the Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO). His research interests focus on the feasibility, challenges and impact of establishing global data platforms for poverty related diseases and emerging infections.

Julian Hughes

Julian Hughes is an old age psychiatrist and philosopher. He was a NHS consultant in old age psychiatry for over 20 years and honorary professor of philosophy of ageing at Newcastle University before moving to be professor of old age psychiatry at the University of Bristol. He has had a particular interest in issues around capacity and consent. He retired from clinical work in 2019 to focus on writing. He remains honorary professor at Bristol and visiting professor at Newcastle. He was formerly Deputy Chair of the Council.

Patricia Kingori

Patricia Kingori is Associate Professor and Wellcome Senior Investigator at the University of Oxford. Her primary expertise is in sociology, and her current research interests intersect the sociology of science and medicine, and a critical examination of ethics in practice. She leads the qualitative research capacity-building programme of the Global Health Bioethics Network; her own work focuses on the views, values and experiences of fieldworkers and other frontline research staff involved in collecting data and interacting with research participants. Her research has taken place in various African locations but has recently extended to South East Asia, and includes the experiences of first responders in humanitarian crises, and of local volunteers responsible for cremating those who died from Ebola in West Africa.

Heidi Larson

Heidi Larson is Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Director of The Vaccine Confidence Project.

Soka Moses

Soka Moses is a physician at the Ministry of Health, Monrovia, Liberia; and site physician for the Ebola survivor Natural History Cohort Study (PREVAIL III) and Partnership for Ebola Virus Research in Liberia (PREVAIL).

Sharifah Sekalala

Sharifah Sekalala is an Associate Professor in the School of Law at the University of Warwick. Her research focuses on the impact of global health institutions on the developing world. She is also interested in the legal and ethical issues relating to the impacts of migration, climate change, rapid urbanisation and the use of new technologies in delivering health outcomes in resource-constrained settings.

Julian Sheather

Julian Sheather is special adviser in ethics and human rights to the British Medical Association and an ethics adviser to Médecins Sans Frontières. His particular interests lie in health and human rights, medical ethics in times of conflict, humanitarian ethics, public health ethics and mental health and mental capacity. He writes widely on issues in ethics and health, including as a co-author of Medical Ethics Today, the BMA’s handbook on medical ethics and medical law, and as a regular contributor to the British Medical Journal and the Journal of Medical Ethics. He also sits on the British Medical Journal’s ethics committee.

Paulina Tindana

Paulina Tindana is a senior lecturer/bioethicist in the Department of Health Policy, Planning and Management, University of Ghana. Her main research interests lie in understanding the ethical dimensions of international collaborative research, particularly the practical ethical issues arising in genetic/genomic research, informed consent, ethics review, community engagement strategies in global health research and health systems research ethics.

View the working group’s register of interests.