Dónal O’Mathúna has research interests in both healthcare ethics and evidence-based practice (EBP). His ethics research focuses on disasters, pandemics and humanitarian crises, in particular examining ethical issues in One Health research. One Health is an increasingly important approach to global health at the intersection of human, animal and environmental factors that raise challenging ethical issues. He leads a number of funded research and training grants on One Health ethics and disaster bioethics and has contributed to ethics initiatives with the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and other international agencies. He is a member of WHO’s Research Ethics Review Committee. His funded research seeks to develop practical tools and support strategies that facilitate reflection on ethical issues in humanitarian research (see below). He has spoken and published widely in bioethics, including co-editing a number of books on disaster bioethics and research ethics (see below).
O’Mathúna’s work in EBP primarily involves conducting Cochrane systematic reviews. He is the director of the Cochrane Affiliate at the Helene Fuld Institute for EBP through which he offers systematic review workshops. He was the inaugural director of Cochrane Ireland from 2014 to 2017 and is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the Cochrane US Network. He has co-authored six Cochrane systematic reviews and published peer-reviewed articles on evidence-based practice. A selection of these can be viewed at the links below.