The ethics of health systems research in low- and middle-income countries: A call to action

Abstract

The increasing conduct of health systems research (HSR) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has not been matched by concurrent work to clarify the field's ethical dimensions. To begin to address this gap, a two-day workshop on the ethics of HSR in LMICs was convened at Johns Hopkins University in June 2013. Participants included health systems researchers, philosophers, lawyers, bioethicists and institutional review board members from Botswana, Uganda, the UK, USA and Zambia. Based on discussions from the workshop, the paper affirms that, while HSR in LMICs raises ethical issues in relation to constructs (i.e. consent, risk, equipoise) common to international clinical research, the n..