The Role of Public Health in the Prevention of War: Rationale and Competencies

Abstract

In 2009 the American Public Health Association approved the policy statement, "The Role of Public Health Practitioners, Academics, and Advocates in Relation to Armed Conflict and War." Despite the known health effects of war, the development of competencies to prevent war has received little attention. Public health's ethical principles of practice prioritize addressing the fundamental causes of disease and adverse health outcomes. A working group grew out of the American Public Health Association's Peace Caucus to build upon the 2009 policy by proposing competencies to understand and prevent the political, economic, social, and cultural determinants of war, particularly militarism. The working group recommends that schools of public health and public health organizations incorporate these competencies into professional preparation programs, research, and advocacy.

Trauma is a public health issue

“…Each of these levels of prevention can be implemented at different system levels, including society at large, the community, the family, and the individual. Subsequently, risk and protective factors can be translated into multi-sectoral, multi-modal, and multi-level preventive interventions (De Jong, 2010; Wiist et al, 2014). Table 1 provides a few examples of prevention strategies at each level.…”

Larger Than Life: Injecting Hope into the Planetary Health Paradigm

“…Elections and ideology have gross environmental consequences [182,183]. So, too, do aggression, militarism, war and conflict contribute to environmental degradation [184][185][186]; what should otherwise be a highly-cited landmark paper on the role of public health in the prevention of war-one which underscores environmental degradation and the mechanisms by which militarism insinuates itself into education and university-associated "research and development"-has been cited a paltry 28 times (Google Scholar, as of February 2018, since its 2014 publication in the American Journal of Public Health) [187].…”

Exploring women's inclusion and contribution to the building of infrastructures for peace from grassroots initiatives in Kenya

“…Conflictos armados internos han tenido lugar con mayor frecuencia en comparación con los inter-estatales, por lo que los civiles se han convertido en los actores principales de los enfrentamientos armados, así como en sus principales víctimas. Wiist et al (2014) informan que, a pesar de que tanto la proporción de muertes de civiles como los métodos para clasificarlos son controvertidos, los civiles constituyen entre el 85 y el 90% de las víctimas de guerra, y alrededor de diez civiles mueren por cada combatiente muerto.…”

“…Intra-state armed conflicts have been taking place with increased frequency compared to inter-state ones, making civilians the main actors of armed confrontations as well as their main victims. As Wiist et al (2014) report, despite the fact that both the proportion of civilian deaths and the methods for classifying them are controvert, civilians constitute 85 to 90% of war casualties, with about 10 civilians dying for every combatant killed in battle.…”

“…Furthermore, civilians have been targeted for death and sexual violence in many contemporary conflicts, and 70 to 90% of the victims of the 110 million landmines planted since 1960 in 70 countries were civilians (Wiist et al, 2014).…”