Integration of bioethics into public health education in Russia:
the example of MPH program being organized at St-Petersburg State University
Golik N.1, Gorlinsky I.2,Veikher E.2
1
Faculty of Philosophy, Saint-Petersburg State University, Russia; 2 Faculty of Biology and Soil Sciences,
Saint-Petersburg State University, Russia
While it is admitted that there are numerous ethical issues in different aspects of
public health, bioethics still remains mostly optional discipline in public health
education. We are strongly convinced that people specializing in various fields of
public health have to get both required and optional knowledge in bioethics; and this
idea is going to be implemented in the structure of MPH program, which is currently
under development at St-Petersburg State University. In Russian Federation bioethics
as a teaching discipline appeared just recently and has been taught mainly in the
framework of medical education. At the same time ethical challenges in Russia are at
least as numerous and various as in any other place. There is no developed system of
ethical expertise in our country, especially in non-clinical fields. The situation is
complicated by the absence of consensus on the main bioethical paradigms, and
demands serious consideration of international experience.
Public health education per se is not traditional in Russia. Biomedical ethics as it
is taught and studied in the frameworks of medicine, philosophy and biology cannot
be directly brought into public health education. This means the necessity to develop
an independent, in some respect combined and in some respect brand new approach
to the bioethical teaching.
Master of Public Health program planned at St-Petersburg State University is
multidisciplinary by nature. Several Faculties will contribute their facilities,
knowledge and effort to this program; students from different backgrounds are
supposed to be admitted to it. Our methodological approach is based on university
model of education. In an introductory course we aim to make students familiar with
general concepts of bioethics: it’s basic foundations and history; it’s theoretical and
operational role; it’s regulatory functions; ethics and law; ethics and religion;
bioethics as a search for the ways to achieve inter-corporative, inter-disciplinary and
international compromise in the era of civil society development and globalization. In
the second part of course main problems of bioethics will be touched upon, such as
ethics of life and death, autonomy, incapacity, beneficence, ethics of justice, crosscultural differences, etc. Third part will concentrate more on ethical problems in PH
and ways of ethical regulation. This course is going to be included in the number of
core courses, required for almost all students entering the program. Besides the core
course, several electives related to more specific public health areas such as
epidemiology, behavioral sciences in PH, environmental health are planned. In the
future an independent specialization “Bioethics in Public Health” may be will
develop in the framework of MPH program.