The humanitarian health ethics (hhe) research group is a multidisciplinary team of researchers and practitioners collaborating since 2009. We conduct research investigating how ethical features of humanitarian health initiatives are experienced by different groups, and inquiries seeking to clarify ethical issues that are present in humanitarian healthcare practice and policy. Beginning in 2009 with a cluster of qualitative research studies, our team began to see that these endeavours would benefit from being drawn together and a programme of research began to grow. Four years later, we hosted the hhe forum meeting in November 2012. This event sparked several initiatives, including the launch of the Reflections Newsletter, this website, and the compilation of a set of research priorities for this domain of research. Since then, the hhe research group has worked with diverse collaborators and partners to conduct studies on a wide set of topics related to humanitarian health ethics, ranging from ethics oversight of research in disasters, palliative care in humanitarian crises, experiences of participation in Ebola clinical trials, and ethical dimensions of humanitarian innovation.
Short bios of hhe research group team members are included below. Over the years the research group has also benefited from the involvement of former HHE students. Projects have also engaged the collaboration of local researchers broadening the scope and perspective of the research and permitting greater co-design of the overall research program.
Elysée Nouvet is an Assistant Professor in Global Health at Western University in London, Ontario, and member of the Humanitarian Health Ethics research group. Trained as a cultural and medical anthropologist, her work explores how cultural norms, values, and power relations shape definitions and responses to need, disease and suffering.
Carrie Bernard is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto and an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University. She completed her MPH in Community Health and Epidemiology with a focus in Global Health in 2012. She was the first family physician to sit on Public Health Ontario’s Provincial Infectious Disease Advisory Committee for Communicable Diseases and did so from 2012-2018.
Lisa Eckenwiler is Associate Professor of Philosophy at George Mason University and faculty director of the Global Health Ethics Fellows program. Prior to this position, she held appointments at Old Dominion University and Duke University. She has held fellowships at the Center for American Progress and le Centre de Recherche en Ethique at the University of Montreal.
Rachel Yantzi holds a master’s degree in community health nursing and public health from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Goshen College. In addition to her work with the Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Group, Rachel is pediatric critical care nurse at McMaster Children’s Hospital and coordinates a study related to ethics during pediatric resuscitation research. Rachel worked with MSF in the Central African Republic in 2009 as supervisor of an inpatient department and therapeutic feeding program.
Anushree Dave is currently pursuing an MSc in Bioethics at McGill University under the supervision of Dr. Matthew Hunt. She completed her undergraduate work in Health Science (with a focus on Health Policy) at Western University and has experience working in the pharmaceutical industry doing subject recruitment and clinical trial marketing. During her time as an undergraduate, as well as in the industry, she developed a keen interest in learning about the ethics that guide research involving humans. Her current research focuses on ethical transparency and reproducibility of disaster research and humanitarian aid.
Humanitarian Health Ethics 