The Healthcare Ethics & Equity Team is dedicated to community-engaged research, knowledge translation, and education to address ethical issues and promote health equity.
Healthcare Ethics
Healthcare ethics focuses on resolving uncertainty about the ‘right thing to do’ or the ‘best path forward’ in healthcare practice and policy. Ethical issues can arise in all areas of healthcare, from evaluating capacity to consent to care, to allocating scarce public health resources, to addressing racism in healthcare settings. We work collaboratively with healthcare providers and community members in designing research projects to identify and analyze unresolved ethical issues. Through this research we aim to promote healthcare practices and policies that uphold key healthcare values of care, equity, humility, Indigenous Cultural Safety, justice, relationship, respect, and stewardship.
Health Equity
Health equity involves ensuring every person has opportunities to attain the highest possible standard of health. An important aspect of this work is addressing health disparities experienced by equity-deserving groups. Equity-deserving groups are communities that experience significant barriers to resources and to opportunities in society as a result of systemic discrimination based on characteristics such as age, class, disability, ethnicity, gender, Indigeneity, nationality, race, and sexual orientation. Our research focuses addressing healthcare access as a determinant of health among equity-deserving groups, with projects addressing health information needs, health misinformation, and healthcare provider education. Our goal is to promote social justice through greater health equity and better health outcomes.
Knowledge Translation
Knowledge translation and exchange are central to the work of our team. We engage with knowledge users to determine how best to share our research findings so that they result in positive changes for community members. Much of this work relates to improving healthcare practices and policies to ensure members of equity-deserving groups have more equitable access to healthcare resources. Our knowledge translation and exchange activities include publishing journal articles, presenting at conferences and webinars, creating online learning modules, and developing arts-based educational materials. We invite you to explore the Projects & Resources section of this website to learn more about our current and completed projects.
UBC Vancouver is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. The land it is situated on has always been a place of learning for the Musqueam, who for millennia have passed on their culture, history, and traditions from one generation to the next on this site. We offer our acknowledgement, gratitude, and respect to all Indigenous communities on whose traditional territories our work is conducted and shared for their stewardship of these lands since time immemorial.