Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King's College London, London, Strand, UK.
BMC Med Ethics. 2023 Oct 27;24(1):90. doi: 10.1186/s12910-023-00973-2.
The health sector aims to improve health outcomes and access to healthcare. At the same time, the sector relies on unsustainable environmental practices that are increasingly recognised to be catastrophic threats to human health and health inequities. As such, a moral imperative exists for the sector to address these practices. While strides are currently underway to mitigate the environmental impacts of healthcare, less is known about how health researchers are addressing these issues, if at all.
This paper uses an interview methodology to explore the attitudes of UK health researchers using data-intensive methodologies about the adverse environmental impacts of their practices, and how they view the importance of these considerations within wider health goals.
Interviews with 26 researchers showed that participants wanted to address the environmental and related health harms associated with their research and they reflected on how they could do so in alignment with their own research goals. However, when tensions emerged, their own research was prioritised. This was related to their own desires as researchers and driven by the broader socio-political context of their research endeavours.
To help mitigate the environmental and health harms associated with data-intensive health research, the socio-political context of research culture must be addressed.
卫生部门旨在改善健康结果和获得医疗保健的机会。与此同时，该部门依赖于不可持续的环境实践，这些实践正日益被认为对人类健康和健康不平等构成灾难性威胁。因此，卫生部门有责任解决这些做法。虽然目前正在采取措施减轻医疗保健对环境的影响，但人们对健康研究人员是否在解决这些问题，以及如何解决这些问题知之甚少。
本文使用访谈方法，探讨了英国使用数据密集型方法的健康研究人员对其实践的不利环境影响的态度，以及他们如何看待这些考虑因素在更广泛的健康目标中的重要性。
对 26 名研究人员的访谈表明，参与者希望解决与其研究相关的环境和相关健康危害，并思考如何在符合自身研究目标的情况下解决这些问题。然而，当出现紧张局势时，他们自己的研究被优先考虑。这与他们作为研究人员的自身愿望有关，并受到他们研究工作的更广泛社会政治背景的驱动。
为了帮助减轻与数据密集型健康研究相关的环境和健康危害，必须解决研究文化的社会政治背景。
