Health disparities across patient populations reflect deeply embedded, historically rooted socioeconomic and political dynamics. Physicians and health care institutions have a duty to serve as agents of change to address these structural barriers to optimal health for all.

In handling patient data, individual physicians should balance supporting and respecting patient privacy with upholding their ethical obligations to the betterment of public health. The use of data for the benefit of public health should be treated as a form of public good in which the standards and values of health care should follow the data and be upheld and maintained. Those with access to datasets have a duty to uphold the ethical values of health care in which the data were produced.

Short-term global health clinical encounters provide needed care to individual patients in under-resourced settings and address global health inequities. Physicians engaging in short-term global health clinical encounters have an ethical obligation to prioritize benefits for the host community and ensure quality care while maintaining awareness for cultural differences. Sponsors of short-term global health clinical encounters should ensure the provision of resources, that team members practice within the limits of their skills, and that a mechanism for meaningful data collection is in place.

Physicians have clinical ethical responsibilities to address the pain and suffering occasioned by illness and injury, requiring physicians to ensure the provision of effective palliative care regardless of prognosis. Palliative care is sound medical treatment that is patient-centered with additional focus on the needs, values, beliefs, and culture of patients and those who love and care for them in decision-making accordingly.

Organ transplantation allocation decisions should be guided by ethically sound and clinically relevant standards. Non-medical factors should not be considered when making allocation decisions for scarce resources such as organs.

Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks. Instead of engaging in assisted suicide, physicians must respond to the needs of patients at the end of life.

Orders not to attempt resuscitation (DNAR orders) direct the health care team to withhold resuscitative measures in accord with a patient’s wishes. Physicians should address the potential need for resuscitation early in the patient’s course of care, while the patient has decision-making capacity, and should encourage the patient to include his or her chosen surrogate in the conversation.

Physicians should engage patients whose capacity is impaired in decisions involving their own care to the greatest extent possible, including when the patient has previously designated a surrogate to make decisions on their behalf.

At the heart of medicine lie relationships founded in a “covenant of trust” between patient and physician in which physicians commit themselves to responding to the needs and promoting the welfare of patients.