BIOETHICAL ISSUES IN COMMUNITY HEALTH

Abstract

The research and interventions that are made from the community-based health require criteria and guidelines to address the peculiarities of this work in contrast to disciplines that have developed codes of ethics for their development.

Some principles provide key aspects to be taken into consideration, such as dignity and respect, protection, autonomy, distributive justice, equity, interculturality, intersectorality and interdisciplinarity. With these initial considerations, some organizations and institutions have developed guidelines, codes and principles that shape this body of knowledge ideally suited for working in the community health area, although a further elaboration and consolidation of these aspects still needs to be taken more into consideration and included in the initiatives being undertaken in the collectives.

This paper does an initial review of the concept of community health and its key elements, to then expose the ethical principles that should guide the work within the community health area and examine some of those that have been proposed by organizations and institutions which, one way or another, work in the field to finally propose some thoughts that contribute to consolidating a bioethics orientation of the research and involvement from the community health services.