APRU Global Health Webinars - Beyond the Basic Principles - Ethical Research with Vulnerable Populations

Drawing on real-world research experience, speakers will highlight the challenges of ensuring meaningful protections—such as informed consent under conditions of power imbalance, risks of coercion or exploitation, cultural sensitivity, confidentiality, and equitable benefit-sharing. The session will emphasize how structural inequalities, legal precarity, and institutional constraints can undermine ethical standards in practice, and will explore strategies researchers can adopt to uphold accountability, respect autonomy, and minimize harm in diverse research settings.

By highlighting cross-cultural perspectives from speakers from Australia, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, and the United States, the webinar will highlight how ethical frameworks are applied, adapted, or contested across diverse socio-cultural and regulatory contexts. It aims to advance scholarly dialogue on the ethics of research with vulnerable populations, moving beyond procedural compliance toward more reflexive, context-sensitive, and inclusive approaches to global health research with vulnerable populations.

The webinar is hosted by the Working Group on Bioethics and aims to foster dialogue on more inclusive, respectful, and ethically grounded approaches to global health research. Session 2 will conclude with an optional 30-minute small group discussion, which will allow for further conversations amongst participants using guided prompts.