Balancing digital health benefits with environmental justice: Ethical and empirical explorations in planetary health informatics

Background

By combining data from a range of global health and environmental sources, health informatics can help improve the understanding of chronic and communicable diseases, monitor the impact of changes to the climate and the environment on human health and address sources of health inequalities across the globe. At the same time, the infrastructure that enables this type of research has harmful impacts on the environment and vulnerable populations. This project aims at exploring the questions:

• How to understand environmental costs and weigh them against the expected health and environmental benefits of digital technologies?
• How to ensure that these costs and benefits are fairly distributed across groups and populations?
• How to understand benefits and harms for current and future generations?

research experience, research methods and skills training

Qualitative data collection in the Planetary Health Informatics Lab (NDORMS, Oxford) (interviews, participant observation).

Conceptual and normative analysis of concepts of data and environmental justice, obligations towards future generations.

FIELD WORK, SECONDMENTS, INDUSTRY PLACEMENTS AND TRAINING

This project will be conducted in collaboration with the Planetary Health Informatics Lab (NDORMS, Oxford).

The student will be based at Ethox but will also be part of the PHI team, which will enable them to understand the research and explore conceptual questions in practical research settings.

PROSPECTIVE STUDENT

The ideal candidate will have a Bachelor’s/Master’s degree in a relevant area such as philosophy, bioethics, anthropology, political science or sociology. Will have some experience of collecting qualitative data (or willingness to get some training in these methods) and an ability to understand philosophical literature and engage in conceptual analysis.