South Heartland District Health Department

South Heartland District Health Department

Phone: (402) 462-6211

Address: 606 N Minnesota Ave. Suite 2 Hastings, Nebraska 68901

The essence of our organization exists to improve the communities health–to preserving and improving the health of residents of Adams, Clay, Nuckolls, and Webster counties. We are committed to the principles of public health and strive to be a credible, collaborative and stable resource in our communities. Our success requires collaboration with many agencies and dedicated persons who support our mission, learn more and get involved.

Public Health Ethics

South Heartland strives to follow the principles of the ethical practice of public health. This promotes and protects the public’s health while ensuring that clients and customers are safe and are not inadvertently harmed due to programmatic or policy actions.

South Heartland maintains an ethics committee whose role is to:

• Clarify, prioritize, and justify possible courses of public health action
• Provide greater transparency in decision making to build public trust
• Strengthen scientific integrity and professional excellence

Ethical considerations are important when deliberating public health issues such as:

• How should SHDHD allocate limited resources (e.g., ventilators, vaccine, etc.) during a pandemic outbreak?
• How should SHDHD avoid actual or perceived conflict of interest in working with vendors?
• When should someone be isolated or quarantined to protect the health of others?