FBL Research Insights Seminar Series - 1 October, 2024

Using Ethics to Inform Interventions, Policy Impact and Public Dissemination in an International Research Consortia

When we think about ethics in the context of research, we often think only of research ethics, but there are other ways ethics can be important. In this presentation, I discuss my involvement as an ethicist in a funded research project undertaken by an international research consortium (FACE-UP). This project was designed with ethics as one of seven research work packages (both science and social science research into protections for children highly exposed to air pollution in low- and middle-income countries). Reviewers saw ethics as one of the most important aspects of the project as asking whether something should be done and assessing how and why it should be done would add as much value as finding out whether interventions worked and whether children, families and policymakers were aware of risks and would adopt interventions.

The inclusion of ethics as a component of the research exposed researchers in the consortia to ethical issues and provoked debate during the research about the ethical implications of research results. It consequently impacted on the way in which consortia researchers decided to communicate findings to participants and stakeholders and, in the broader dissemination stage, with the public.

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