This guidance on the ethics of health research priority setting has been produced by the WHO Health Ethics and Governance Unit. The Unit convened a small expert writing group1, which was tasked with consulting widely with stakeholder groups globally in drafting the guidance. The document aligns to the Unit’s commitment to promoting ethical research and responds to calls for greater equity in health research globally.
Decisions about the allocation of resources for health research are matters of ethical concern, since who is ultimately likely to benefit from future research depends on which populations, conditions, and modalities are prioritized. The draft document circulated in this consultation aims to provide guidance for incorporating ethical considerations into health research priority setting. Such guidance is intended to supplement existing technical guidance by detailing explicit and systematic ethical principles for priority setting. Going forward, the aim is also to incorporate key elements of this guidance into relevant technical and policy guidance.
This document is intended to be relevant to everyone who engages in decisions about which health research to conduct, including individual researchers and patients, as well as funders and government agencies. We are particularly cognizant that those with responsibility for research agendas and priority setting exercises may benefit from this guidance.
Objective of the consultation
The goal of this online, open public consultation is to gather feedback from stakeholders on the draft WHO guidance on the ethics of health research priority setting. Comments are invited in particular on overall clarity, usability, and any gaps in the ethical considerations developed in the document.
Guidance on providing comments
Download and review the draft guidance. Compose your responses to each question using your preferred word processor or text editing software and paste your responses into the online form.
By participating, you consent to providing your personal information and comments to the WHO to contact you, if needed.
Submissions cannot be made anonymously. In order to make a submission, you will be required to provide valid responses to questions that ask your full name, your organizational affiliation (if any), your role (job title), your country of residence, your personal email address OR your organizational email address (if submitting on behalf of an organization). Submissions that are not accompanied by valid responses to these questions may not be accepted for consideration.
All comments will be carefully reviewed. We might share a summary of key points raised in the public consultation with the participants’ demographics and their representation of stakeholder groups on the WHO website. We will not reveal any individual participants’ information or affiliations. We do not intend to publish the ‘raw information’ from the individual responses.
For any query related to the consultation, please contact ct_ethics@who.int with subject "Health Research Priority Setting consultation".
Comments on the Draft Guidance must be submitted by 11:59pm on Sunday, 1st December 2024, Central European Time (GMT/UHC +1).
[1] Expert writing group members: Joseph Millum (University of St Andrews, UK); Bernardo Aguilera (Universidad San Sebastian, Chile); Caesar Atuire (University of Ghana, Ghana, and Oxford University, UK); Soumyadeep Bhaumik (George Institute, India); Nchangwi Syntia Munung (University of Cape Town, South Africa); Leah Pierson (Harvard University, USA); Bridget Pratt (Australian Catholic University, Australia).