Respecting and Protecting the Beloved Community, Especially Susceptible and Vulnerable Populations
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This Introduction discusses the public health and ethical challenges of responding should a pandemic influenza event reach the United States and suggests a framework that public health professionals and faith leaders can use to address those challenges. Critical to such a response is how emergency preparedness strategies can effectively target vulnerable populations. Ethical and programmatic principles and practices of population-based disease prevention and health promotion and protection must prioritize service to those who are habitually underserved. Vulnerable populations are the neediest; thus professionals in the public health and faith communities must afford them special attention.
The public health and faith communities must come together to respond to a possible pandemic flu episode by effective emergency preparedness as an ethical mandate.* While there is no consensus on the best definition for ethics, for the purpose of this manuscript ethics is defined as a set of rules, principles, values, and ideals of a particular group. 1[p.60]
Paying special attention to vulnerable populations is a central ethical challenge for those making hierarchical decisions in times of public health crisis. There are several [End Page 3] central questions that are raised when addressing the possibility of a pandemic flu episode and the designation of vulnerable populations. The authors of this manuscript take the position that, from both a public health and faith community perspective, every human being belongs to the Beloved Community. Regardless, of race/ethnicity, gender, class, geographic locale, or any other demographic characteristic, all human beings are a part of the Beloved Community, and every person has agency for self-determination. In the instance of a pandemic flu episode, while everyone is vulnerable, some are more vulnerable than others. The most vulnerable populations must be the priority groups for prevention and treatment.
But what exactly is the Beloved Community? How do the principles and practices of public health and the public health community foster the inclusion of vulnerable populations in the Beloved Community? Are there notion(s) of the Beloved Community implicit in the ideals of public health? What language is used to discuss these matters and how does the language used to discuss them in public health differ from that used in faith communities?
The term Beloved Community has wide-ranging connotations. For some, it connotes religiosity and Christian denominational membership. For others, it brings to mind the name of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy, not only a Christian minister but as a social activist with an all-inclusive worldview. While the present manuscript relies on King's description of the Beloved Community, the idea precedes him. Smith and Zepp described the development of the notion of a Beloved Community: "Liberalism and personalism provided the theological and physical foundation for the concept; nonviolence provided the means to attain it; the Christian realism of Reinhold Niebuhr provided the initial optimism. . . ." 2[p.119] Niebuhr, an ethicist, theologian, and political philosopher, felt that the church should not be content with producing moral idealists who think they could establish justice. He felt, ". . . no community is so ethical that its justice could not be improved by political, as well as ethical relationships in it." 2[p.43]
How do these ideas bear on the imperative to prepare for public health emergencies? In our view, Niebhur's assessment applies here as well: no community, including the public health community and the faith community, is so ethical that its social justice could not be improved by political, as well as ethical relationships in it.
King's beliefs about the Beloved Community reached beyond racial integration and the church to the interrelatedness of all human beings. King famously said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." 2[p.122] The quest for justice is central both to the notion of the Beloved Community and to the principles and practices of public health. Conversations between people working for justice in these two...
