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PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Policy
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1542587
Ethical burdens of COVID-19 testing: The case for a research agenda to improve effectiveness and equity in pandemic response
Provisionally accepted- 1 College of Medicine, Department of Biomedical Education and Anatomy, Division of Bioethics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, United States
- 2 College of Public Health, The Ohio State University, Columbus, United States
US public health response to COVID-19 has focused on increasing availability and access to viral testing, which raises three sets of potential problems: (1) lack of testing uptake, (2) diminished public health impact of testing, and (3) loss of access to necessary social goods and supports. Moreover, these problems are encountered differentially in affluent versus disadvantaged communities. If not addressed, these problems could exacerbate health disparities via the public health strategies that aim to lower the population-level impact of COVID. These problems also risk undermining trust in public health interventions more broadly and pose challenges to the sustainability of testing programs moving forward. In this perspective essay, we argue that public health research must aim to document and understand the mechanisms through which living in structurally disadvantaged environments exacerbates not only the logistical and material burdens of COVID-19 testing, but also the ethical and social burdens it creates. Such research will facilitate development of targeted interventions that empower people to make the testing-related decisions that best serve both their own interests and those of their broader communities.
Keywords: COVID-19, Ethics, Socioeconomic Factors, Decisional Burdens, health equity, Research Methods
Received: 10 Dec 2024; Accepted: 17 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Howard, Norris Turner, Nemeth and Padamsee. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Dana Howard, College of Medicine, Department of Biomedical Education and Anatomy, Division of Bioethics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, United States
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