ABSTRACT
Ethical accountability to stakeholders in healthcare requires a moral commitment from healthcare organizations to the common good, and to the sustained well-being of the communities they serve. This moral commitment includes care for the most vulnerable and disempowered across the life continuum. To that end, this chapter is dedicated to the treatment of vulnerable pediatric populations. Children are predisposed to contingent vulnerability. They cohabitate in a world of complex relationships, cultural contexts, and unique experiences. This chapter examines this contextual vulnerability by exploring the experiences unique to children with HIV, victims of abuse and maltreatment, children with special cognitive and developmental disorders, and those who live with the effects of pediatric obesity. It begins by exploring the moral duty of healthcare organizations and their agents to expand opportunities for ethical research participation for these children. It introduces the goodness-of-fit model of relational ethics to help healthcare professionals understand the impact of culture and personal values on the child and caregivers. Such cultural humility is an essential component of moral accountability. This chapter then outlines the ethical justification for intervention to address the psychosocial and physiological harms of childhood obesity through care ethics, according to the social parent theory.
