Mason Institute Webinar Series: Ethics and Priority Setting for Health Research
Location:
Online only
Date/time
Tue 25 February 2025
13:00 - 14:00
About the event
Health research is a vital component of efforts to improve health worldwide. But the resources available for health research are insufficient to answer all the important questions. Difficult decisions must therefore be made about how to allocate scarce research resources. At present the global allocation of these resources is widely thought to be unjust—disproportionately focusing on developing new treatments for conditions that affect wealthier populations. Yet, knowing that the global allocation is unjust does not tell us how individual governments, funders, and research institutions should set their own research priorities. In this talk, Dr. Millum will give an overview of the ethics of health research priority setting, including current key challenges and possible ways forward.
About the speaker
Dr. Millum is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at St Andrews University in Scotland. He serves as a consultant to the World Health Organisation and he is the Chair of the International Society for Priorities in Health. Prior to St Andrews, Dr. Millum worked at the US National Institutes of Health for 15 years - in the Clinical Center Department of Bioethics and the Fogarty International Center. Dr. Millum received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto and an M.Sc. in applied economics from Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on the rights and responsibilities of parents, the ethics of international research, informed consent, and priority setting for health care and research. His books include Global Justice and Bioethics (2012), The Moral Foundations of Parenthood (2018), Global Health Priority-Setting: Beyond Cost-Effectiveness (2020), and A Theory of Bioethics (2021).