Strengthening global health policies, guidance, regulations: responding to calls for public consultation by integrating diverse voices, experience and expertise

Abstract

In this open letter, members of the Global Forum for Research Ethics and Integrity [GFREI] – an open, independent collaborative involving 80+ individuals in 30+ countries – report on and extend arguments made during a workshop conducted at the Oxford Global Health and Bioethics International Conference (June 26–27, 2023). Ten GFREI presenters from nine countries used a case study approach to present and discuss an emerging model to integrate diverse global voices in engaging open public consultation opportunities – sometimes termed calls for input, calls for public comment, requests for information (RFIs). A key form of public consultation invites observations and ideas on, and specific edits to, draft versions of policies, guidance, regulations, and other formats under a specific deadline. Based on our experience, we posit that engagement of public consultation opportunities is a matter of transnational civic responsibility; that such engagement can add substantive value to public discourse and the realization of public good; that engaging voices and views from all global regions, and respecting and integrating diverse contributions from varying experience, expertise and forms of knowledge significantly strengthens public consultation responses; and that sustaining and extending GFREI’s independent global voice, and building its diversity and the range of disciplines represented, is worthy of robust support from the global community. Finally, we call on the ethics/bioethics community to engage these calls as an important strategy in advancing the ethical soundness of the laws, regulations, policies, guidelines presented for public consultation.