| Like a slowly rising wave approaching shore, the growing incidence of allergic disease now afflicts over 30% of the population in the developed world. Being the cause of severe morbidities and a significant risk of mortality, allergy requires huge resource expenditures in health care and is a leading cause of disability. This thesis aims to contribute to ameliorating decision-making capacities in health policy development for this chronic immune disease by employing principles of ethics as tools to help structure policy initiatives. The first chapter will demonstrate the current deficiency of ethical analysis in allergology and show how ethical assessments could have utility in guiding policy developments and treatment strategies for allergy. The subsequent chapters present a focused application of ethical principles within specific contexts as a means to provide reflective tools and theoretical frameworks that could be used by decision-makers to guide health interventions for allergy and co-morbid conditions. The second chapter presents a conceptual framework for evaluating and prioritizing public health interventions in minimizing environmental allergens based on theories of social justice. Policy assessment criteria centre on justice issues pertaining to vulnerable populations, the fair distribution of health benefits, and the imperative to avoid stigma. The third chapter provides school administrators with a framework to guide the development of efficacious and ethically sound food allergy policies for schools. In this context, core principles in public health ethics and bioethics -- examples being the empowerment of vulnerable populations in controlling their health and protecting confidentiality of medical information -- serve as tools for policy assessments. The final chapter employs core principles from research ethics as a method to argue for regulatory reforms in the production of allergen-immunotherapeutic drugs. The ethical imperative to avoid risks of harm to human subjects in research will serve as a guide to structure future health policies in the global production of immuno-therapeutics.;Keywords: Allergy, Bioethics, Health policy, Public Health, Policy assessment, Principles of ethics, Conceptual frameworks. |
