The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), State Health Care Coordination Center (SHCCC), Minnesota Hospital Association (MHA), and the University of Minnesota convened a statewide Minnesota COVID Ethics Collaborative (MCEC) in March 2020. The goal of MCEC is to rapidly share expertise and support sound ethical policy to cope with the moral challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis, such as allocation of scarce medical resources in the event that need surges beyond supply.
This multidisciplinary group brings together experts from organizations across the state including ethics, law, public health, medicine, nursing, disaster planning, and spiritual care. We continue to be creative and collaborative in utilizing University expertise to address this crisis in new ways. MCEC is co-led by Debra DeBruin, PhD, from the Center for Bioethics, and Susan M. Wolf, JD, from the Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences.
Building on a decade of prior work sponsored by MDH, MCEC has developed an ethical foundation for response to the pandemic and to guide transitions between conventional, contingency, and crisis conditions. MCEC is supporting statewide collaboration to address the specifics of the COVID challenge in a way that honors the ethical commitments that Minnesota has embraced.