VTechWorks staff will be away for the winter holidays starting Tuesday, December 24, 2024, through Wednesday, January 1, 2025, and will not be replying to requests during this time. Thank you for your patience, and happy holidays!

Browsing by Author "Lee, Lisa M."

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    Ethics Lessons Learned and Lessons Remaining from the Last Global Public Health Crisis: Ebola and COVID-19
    Lee, Lisa M. (University of Madrid, 2020-06)
    Like the 2014-2015 multi-country Ebola outbreak (WHO 2014), the COVID-19 pandemic has presented ethical challenges in nearly every sphere of life. Unlike Ebola, which was largely contained to three contiguous countries in western Africa, COVID- 19 reached pandemic status shortly following its start in December 2019 in Wuhan China (China CDC 2020). Two different viruses, two different epidemics, but many similar ethical dimensions. Both the Ebola and COVID-19 epidemics are caused by viruses that were poorly understood at the start of the outbreak. At the time of both outbreaks, there were no known effective treatments or vaccines for either disease. Limited and rapidly changing empirical data made communicating with the public challenging. Both diseases require isolation of the infected and elaborate personal protective equipment to prevent transmission to the medical staff who provided care and funeral staff who prepared the deceased for burial. Both diseases required swift epidemiologic and clinical research to reduce morbidity and mortality. Both diseases frightened communities and exacerbated existing inequities. With many medical and ethical commonalities, perhaps the lessons from the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic could guide the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Transdisciplinary Directions for Research Funding
    Lee, Lisa M.; Iyengar, Sunil; Knapp, R. Benjamin; Roberto, Karen A. (Virginia Tech, 2018-11-27)
    Dr. Lee facilitates a discussion with grant-makers and Investment Institute Directors on research funding and resource development for complex initiatives.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Transdisciplinary Directions for Research Funding
    Lee, Lisa M. (Virginia Tech, 2018-11-27)
    Lisa Lee is Associate Vice President for Research and Innovation at Virginia Tech.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Uncertainty, scarcity and transparency: Public health ethics and risk communication in a pandemic
    Lowe, Abigail E.; Voo, Teck Chuan; Lee, Lisa M.; Gillespie, Kelly K. Dineen; Feig, Christy; Ferdinand, Alva O.; Mohapatra, Seema; Brett-Major, David M.; Wynia, Matthew K. (Elsevier, 2022-12)
    Communicating public health guidance is key to mitigating risk during disasters and outbreaks, and ethical guidance on communication emphasizes being fully transparent. Yet, communication during the pandemic has sometimes been fraught, due in part to practical and conceptual challenges around being transparent. A particular challenge has arisen when there was both evolving scientific knowledge on COVID-i9 and reticence to acknowledge that resource scarcity concerns were influencing public health recommendations. This essay uses the example of communicating public health guidance on masking in the United States to illustrate ethical challenges of developing and conveying public health guidance under twin conditions of uncertainty and resource scarcity. Such situations require balancing two key principles in public health ethics: the precautionary principle and harm reduction. Transparency remains a bedrock value to guide risk communication, but optimizing transparency requires consideration of additional ethical values in developing and implementing risk communication strategies. Copyright (C) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.