Introduction:

Bioethics education for epidemiologists has a favorable impact on the health of communities, contributes to ethical decision making and helps promote equitable health outcomes for all populations.

Objective:

To identify the social representations (SR) of bioethics in students of the epidemiology specialization of a university in Pereira, Risaralda, Colombia.

Method:

qualitative study from the theoretical approach of cognitive anthropology by means of processual, prototypical and structural analysis of Social Representations through the associative techniques of free listing and peer comparison questionnaire, to consolidate the content, organization and graphic representation of the SRs of 17 students of the specialization in epidemiology.

Results:

For the participants, SR on Bioethics revolves around ethics for life and respect for human rights in its central core; the aspects that establish the peripheral elements of the representation are constituted by principles, morals, equity, respect and norms.

Discussion:

The results presented here are discussed in the light of conceptual advances in applied ethics, principlist bioethics and global bioethics in the perspective of rights for the respect of life.

Conclusions:

SR of bioethics in epidemiologists in training is broadly understood as a branch of ethics from a perspective of rights and respect for life.