Thursday, 13 April 2023, the Faculty of Public Health (FPH) Universitas Indonesia (UI) held a Public Lecture on Global Health with the theme “Global Health Research Ethics”. This public lecture was conducted online and was attended by all 4th semester Regular Undergraduate Study Program students and 2nd Semester Public Health Extension Undergraduate Study Program students. Present as a speaker, Mellissa Whiters, Ph.D., MHS., Associate Professor of Clinical Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and Director of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) Health Program.
Material presentation by Dr. Mellissa begins with examples of research cases that violate ethics, such as the research of The Monster Study in 1939 in Iowa, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in 1972 in Alabama, and several other examples of cases. This research case is the background for the birth of the Nuremberg Code, which is a research code of ethics based on human rights. “Protecting research subjects is crucial in research ethics, especially when the research subjects are included in vulnerable populations,” said Dr. Melissa.
In the Declaration of Helsinki, namely the ethical principles regarding human trials developed by the World Medical Association, it is stated that the main goal of health research is to understand the causes and effects of disease and improve prevention, diagnosis, and therapeutic interventions. For this reason, there are three principles that need to be considered in research: beneficence, justice, and respect for person.
There is a research concept that can minimize ethical violations, namely Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR). In this concept, researchers and the community as research subjects are considered partners with equal status. Melissa.
At the end of his delivery, Dr. Mellissa said that it is very important for public health students to understand the ethical code in research. The hope is that this Global Health Public Lecture can produce public health experts who have a good understanding of research ethics. (WR)
