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The Ethox Centre
The Ethox Centre is a multidisciplinary bioethics research centre in the University of Oxford’s Department of Public Health. It aims to improve ethical standards in healthcare practice and in medical research through education, research, and the provision of ethics support to health professionals and medical researchers.
The Ethox Centre aims in all its activities to be close to practice and seeks to engage with ethical issues faced by real world actors in real world settings. An implication of this is that the Centre places particular value on approaches to research bringing together empirical social science research and ethical analysis.
The Centre’s research activities focus on three areas: global health ethics; clinical ethics; and research ethics.
Featured Research Project
Ethical issues in the care and support of
'vulnerable adults'
Michael Dunn
This programme of research, funded by the Ethox Foundation, aims to improve ethical standards in the day-to-day care, support and treatment provided to 'vulnerable adults', including those with dementia, intellectual disabilities, brain injuries, and long term mental health needs. One objective of this programme is to develop research capacity, education, and ethics support in social care ethics, understood as a field of inquiry connected to, but distinct from, medical ethics.
Research and education activities focus on three inter-related themes: i) ethical issues in the use of assistive technologies in care work; ii) the 'moral world' of residential care environments; and iii) empirical and ethical dimensions of the contemporary legal, political and regulatory landscape of adult mental health and social care. Specific projects within these three themes integrate ethical, policy and legal analyses with empirical studies that explore the experiences and understandings of the men and women who work in, and receive support in, a range of health and social care settings.
For more information about this research contact michael.dunn@ethox.ox.ac.uk
News and Events
18th February 2010
Seminar: Ethics and the use of financial incentives in health care
Professor Richard Ashcroft (Queen Mary, London)
1pm - 2pm Richard Doll Building Lecture Theatre, Old Road Campus, Headington, Oxford
Ethical Data Release in Genome Wide Association Studies in Developing Countries
An new paper in PLoS Medicine by members of the Ethox team in collaboration with malaria researchers explores the ethical issues arsing in genomic research in developing countries.
The paper can be accessed in full text below:
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000143
New Report: Dementia - Ethical Issues
Nuffield Council on Bioethics Report
A Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party, chaired by the Ethox Centre's Professor Tony Hope, has published a major new report on the ethical issues arising in the care and treatment of people with dementia.
The report can be downloaded from the Nuffield Council website: http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/
