Disasters: Core Concepts and Ethical Theories

by Dónal P. O’Mathúna (Editor), Vilius Dranseika (Editor), Bert Gordijn (Editor)

This Open Access Book is the first to examine disasters from a multidisciplinary perspective. Justification of actions in the face of disasters requires recourse both to conceptual analysis and ethical traditions. Part 1 of the book contains chapters on how disasters are conceptualized in different academic disciplines relevant to disasters. Part 2 has chapters on how ethical issues that arise in relation to disasters can be addressed from a number of fundamental normative approaches in moral and political philosophy. This book sets the stage for more focused normative debates given that no one book can be completely comprehensive. Providing analysis of core concepts, and with real-world relevance, this book should be of interest to disaster scholars and researchers, those working in ethics and political philosophy, as well as policy makers, humanitarian actors and intergovernmental organizations..

Genres: Philosophy

246 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 16, 2018

About the author

Dónal O’Mathúna, PhD, has degrees in pharmacy, medicinal chemistry, and theology (focused on bioethics). He is a lecturer in healthcare ethics in the School of Nursing at Dublin City University, Ireland. Dr. O’Mathúna’s long-time interest in alternative medicine has led to many publications in professional journals and the general media.

source: Amazon

Dónal O’Mathúna has research interests in both healthcare ethics and evidence-based practice (EBP). His ethics research focuses on disasters, pandemics and humanitarian crises, in particular examining ethical issues in One Health research. One Health is an increasingly important approach to global health at the intersection of human, animal and environmental factors that raise challenging ethical issues. He leads a number of funded research and training grants on One Health ethics and disaster bioethics and has contributed to ethics initiatives with the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and other international agencies. He is a member of WHO’s Research Ethics Review Committee. His funded research seeks to develop practical tools and support strategies that facilitate reflection on ethical issues in humanitarian research (see below). He has spoken and published widely in bioethics, including co-editing a number of books on disaster bioethics and research ethics (see below).

O’Mathúna’s work in EBP primarily involves conducting Cochrane systematic reviews. He is the director of the Cochrane Affiliate at the Helene Fuld Institute for EBP through which he offers systematic review workshops. He was the inaugural director of Cochrane Ireland from 2014 to 2017 and is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the Cochrane US Network. He has co-authored six Cochrane systematic reviews and published peer-reviewed articles on evidence-based practice. A selection of these can be viewed at the links below.

source: The Ohio State University | College of Nursing