Guiding Ethical Frameworks for Avoiding Burdens 

This page summarizes three guiding ethical frameworks with questions that can help administering agencies consider whether a given program design choice or project type may cause burden when implementing the Supplemental Guidance to Avoid Substantial Burdens or Harms to Priority Populations.

Ethical frameworks provide a set of values to help evaluate complex situations in a structured way that can bring greater clarity to decisions. The questions below are meant to serve as a thought exercise to help administering agencies identify potential burdens by exploring how the proposed action may be perceived through different perspectives.  

Care Ethics

This framework emphasizes the importance of care, relationships, and empathy in human interactions. Actions that build trust and establish strong, supportive connections are prioritized, and particular attention is given to vulnerable populations.  

Guiding questions that reflect common considerations of Care Ethics:

  1. Will the proposed action cause social burdens or erode community trust?

  2. Will the proposed action strengthen or weaken relationships between the funding recipient and impacted individuals or communities?

Research Ethics

Several research ethical frameworks emphasize the importance of respecting human dignity, rights, autonomy, and an obligation to avoid burdens, both direct and indirect. This framework can also be useful to apply to any program design choice or project type; however, research involving human participants or having a societal impact may require a research ethics review by an Institutional Review Board. 

Guiding questions that reflect common considerations of Research Ethics:

  1. Will the proposed action cause avoidable burden to people that did not support the project?

  2. What direct or indirect burdens could arise? Can they be avoided?

Principlism

An ethical framework centered around four key principles:

  1. Autonomy- respect for decision-making and freedom of choice

  2. Nonmaleficence - normalization of “Do-no-harm"

  3. Beneficence - providing benefits and balancing benefits against risks

  4. Justice - fairness in distributing benefits, risks, and costs

Guiding questions that reflect common considerations of Principlism: 

  1. Who benefits and who is burdened by the proposed action?

  2. Are the benefits and potential negative impacts of the proposed action fairly distributed?

  3. Does the action include components that seek to justify burdens to a priority population, instead of avoiding those burdens?

 
Learn more about Avoiding Burdens

Sources

Findley, M. G., F. Ghosn, and S. J. Lowe. “Vulnerability in Research Ethics: A Call for Assessing Vulnerability and Implementing Protections.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 121, no. 34, 2024, e2322821121.  

 https://www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10.1073/pnas.2322821121 

Trimble, Michael. “Ethics - A matter of principle?.” The Ulster medical journal vol. 93,2 (2024): 83-86. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39669951/ 

van Dijke, J., et al. “Engaging Otherness: Care Ethics’ Radical Perspectives on Empathy.” Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, vol. 26, 2023, pp. 385–399. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-023-10152-0 

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