During the last 115 years, the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws has promulgated more than 300 uniform or model acts. These acts have been drafted to produce uniformity among state laws, and to provide clarity and stability in critical areas of the law. Uniform Anatomical Gift Acts were promulgated in 1968 and again in 1987. The third and most recent revision of the Act was promulgated in 2006 and amended in 2007. This act was placed on NCCUSL’s (...) target list; that is, commissioners were asked to make its enactment a priority in their home states. In 2007, 20 states enacted UAGA 2006; by mid-2008, UAGA 2006 had been introduced or enacted in over a dozen more states and the District of Columbia. NCCUSL’s goal for UAGA 2006 is enactment in all states by 2009. (shrink)

Humanitarian emergencies and natural disasters can overwhelm the capacity of local and national agencies to respond to the needs of affected populations. In such cases, international relief organizations are frequently involved in the provision of emergency assistance. Health care professionals play a key role in these interventions. This practice environment is significantly different from the context of health care delivery in the home countries of expatriate health care professionals. Clinicians who travel from a developed nation to a resource-poor setting where (...) a humanitarian crisis has occurred experience a shift of professional, social, cultural and regulatory environments. In this dissertation I examine the ethics of health care practice in humanitarian work. I evaluate the literature of global bioethics, global health ethics and the ethics of humanitarian assistance, and consider the contributions of various ethics frameworks and normative approaches. I also develop a set of questions to guide health care professionals as they address ethically complex issues arising in clinical practice during humanitarian crises. In the empirical component of this research program I use Interpretive Description methodology to examine the moral experience of health care professionals in humanitarian relief work, and clinician experiences of resources and constraints for addressing ethical issues in humanitarian settings. Building upon the inductively derived findings, I argue for strategies and approaches that humanitarian organizations, project teams, and health care professionals can adopt to respond to the ethics of this field of practice. I also provide a critical review of Interpretive Description methodology. The research presented in this dissertation makes an important contribution to the ethical analysis of health care practice in humanitarian work. (shrink)