Public Trust beyond the hype!
On the 18th March 2020, Caroline Ball and Felix Gille gave an online evening talk as part of the This is Public Health Series organised by the Swiss School of Public Health and ETH Zurich to celebrate the 15 year jubilee of the Swiss School of Public Health.
external pageThis is Public Health Series
Building on their previous work, Caroline and Felix presented their thoughts about public trust in healthcare systems and how Public Health Ethics frameworks can foster public trust. They discussed public trust theory and presented case studies covering trust in vaccination, trust in policy makers and trust in health data repositories.
Public trust is fundamental for the well-functioning of healthcare systems. Yet, the rise of trust as a topic in public debate about governments, private industries and the state sector, suggests a public need to address problems of trust. Despite the increasing prominence of the concept of trust in public discourse as well as increase of research on public trust, there exists little common understanding of what actually public trust is. Based on Felix’s qualitative research on what constitutes public trust in the healthcare system, public trust can be defined as:
Public trust grows in the public sphere from open public discourse and as a result legitimises the actions of the health care system. Public trust builds on information equally relating to past experiences, present perceptions and future expectations. Public trust is established in anticipation of a net benefit for the public as well as the system.
Editorial for the lecture:
Gille, F., Brall, C. (2020) Public trust: caught between hype and need. Int J Public Health. external pagehttps://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-020-01343-0
Further reading:
Brall C, Schröder-Bäck P, Porz R, Tahzib F, Brand H (2019) Ethics, health policy-making and the economic crisis: a qualitative interview study with European policy-makers. Int J Equity Health 18(1):144. external pagehttps://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-019-1050-y
Gille F, Smith S, Mays N (2020) What is public trust in the healthcare system? A new conceptual framework developed from qualitative data in England. Soc Theory Health. external pagehttps://doi.org/10.1057/s41285-020-00129-x