Case Western Reserve University will hold its annual Inamori Ethics Prize Symposium Sept. 19, addressing the moral imperatives of public health with a focus on emerging local and global health threats, including infectious diseases.
This year's topic was chosen with lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic in mind in order to better respond to future public health crises, said Shannon E. French, director of the Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence and ethics professor at CWRU.
Speakers will consider the question, "[What do] we need to have in place to make sure that we treat people fairly and equitably when another health crisis emerges?" French said.
The free event, which will be held from 12:30 to 2 p.m. at the Milton and Tamar Maltz Performing Arts Center at The Temple-Tifereth Israel at CWRU, will feature Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who helped oversee the U.S. response to COVID-19.
Fauci, who is the recipient of this year's Inamori Ethics Prize, will be joined by Dr. Amy Acton, who oversaw Ohio's response to COVID-19 as director of the Ohio Department of Health. They will be joined by Suzanne Rivera, former VP for research and technology management at CWRU, and actor LeVar Burton, the 2019 Inamori Ethics Prize winner.
The question of how best to respond to future public health crises is particularly relevant given contentiousness of the upcoming presidential election, French said.
"The upcoming election has highlighted some of the divisions in this country when it comes to both what government should manage and what we owe to one another," she said. "And it points out to us, in the various debates that arise in the current political climate, that there isn't a full agreement across our population about what our priorities should be, or how we should get help to people who need it, or who should deliver that help."
One particular concern is growing vaccine hesitancy, French said, adding that it's important to acknowledge that there are some valid reasons for skepticism, including distrust by marginalized populations due to historic mistreatment.
"You can't dismiss all of vaccine hesitancy as anti-science or conspiracy theories or things that we would just want to write off as irrational when, in fact, historically there have been deep problems and even betrayals when it comes to how medicines have been tested and how they have been delivered unevenly across populations," French said.
For example, she cited the Black community's distrust of scientific research stemming from incidents like the Tuskegee syphilis study, where the U.S. Public Health Service left hundreds of Black men in Tuskegee, Ala., untreated for syphilis for nearly 40 years.
French said her goal is for attendees to understand the complexity and importance of these issues, and how interconnected everyone is when it comes to public health.
"We live in such an interconnected world that we have to solve problems of the scale of pandemics and other major health issues collectively and equitably, or we will all suffer individually," she said.
