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The Ethics of Health Education as Public Health Policy

Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health Baltimore, Maryland

Alan I. Faden

Walter Reed Army Institute of Research Washington, D. C.

The concept of voluntariness is central to an understanding of ethical considerations in two aspects of public health education practice: (1) the selection of appropriate interventions, and (2) the selection of appro priate targets for such interventions. Theposition is taken that most mass communications programs in public health education are persuasive as well as informative in intent. It is argued that the impact of such pro grams on voluntariness can be analyzed with regard to the rationality and resistibility of the persuasive appeals involved. Considerations of justice, as well as voluntariness and liberty, are reviewed in the discus sion of appropriate targets for intervention. The issue of victim-blaming in public health education is explored, and conditions under which behavioral public health programs may be morally justifiable are suggested.

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