Abstract
Covid-19 continues to teach the global community important lessons about preparedness for research and effective action to respond to emerging health threats. We share the COVID-19 experiences of a pre-existing cross-site ethics network-the Global Health Bioethics Network-which brings together researchers and practitioners from Africa, Europe, and South east Asia. We describe the network and its members and activities, and the work-related opportunities and challenges we faced over a one-year period during the pandemic. We highlight the value of having strong and long-term empirical ethics networks embedded across diverse research institutions to be able to: 1) identify and share relevant ethics challenges and research questions and ways of ’doing research’; 2) work with key stakeholders to identify appropriate ways to contribute to the emerging health issue response – e.g. through ethics oversight, community engagement, and advisory roles at different levels; and 3) learn from each other and from diverse contexts to advocate for positive change at multiple levels. It is our view that being both embedded and long term offers particular opportunities in terms of deep institutional and contextual knowledge and relationships with and access to a wide range of stakeholders in place. Being networked offers opportunities to draw upon a wide range of expertise and perspectives operating at multiple levels, and to bring together internal and external perspectives (i.e. different positionalities). Long term funding means that the people and resources are in place and ready to respond in a timely way. However, many tensions and challenges remain, including difficulties in negotiating power and politics regarding roles that researchers and research institutions play in an emergency, and the position of empirical ethics activities in programmes of research more specifically. We discuss some of these tensions and challenges, and consider the implications for our own and similar networks in future.
Highlights
Large scale epidemics demand a wide range of responses, from preparedness activities, through identification of ‘entry points’ for emergency interventions and coordination of multiple control activities and actors, to dealing with the aftermath[1]
We describe the ways in which Global Health Bioethics Network (GHBN) members were already embedded across diverse research institutions in Africa, Europe, and South east Asia, and the opportunities and challenges we faced in contributing to COVID-19 responses and conducing COVID-19 empirical ethics research
In addition to the empirically driven ethics research GHBN was able to undertake during the COVID-19 pandemic, some members of the network were well-placed – because of their membership of GHBN, their embeddedness in COVID-19 related research initiatives, and their policy roles – to write a number of influential papers and blogs addressing key ethical questions relating to the impact of the pandemic and of responses to it
Summary
Any reports and responses or comments on the article can be found at the end of the article. We highlight the value of having strong and long-term empirical ethics networks embedded across diverse research institutions in order to share ideas about emerging issues, and develop appropriate responses, including through conducting empirical research and playing advisory roles at institutional, regional and global levels. Such networks have the potential to contribute to negotiating persisting tensions and challenges, including regarding power and politics in institutional responses, and the position of empirical ethics in multi-disciplinary research programmes; and can make important contributions to pandemic preparedness
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