Can Health Professionals Inform Policy in Regions of Conflict?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.181
• Author: Nina Al‐Saadi,Harun Khan
• Published date: 01 June 2016
• Date: 01 June 2016

Can Health Professionals Inform Policy in Regions of

Conf‌lict?

Harun Khan and Nina Al-Saadi

The authors call for a role for health professionals in informing policy in public health efforts in

regions of conf‌lict.

KEY WORDS: healthcare workers, conflict, public health campaigns

Previous global health literature has called for health-care workers to

undertake an active role in conf‌lict resolution (Nathanson, 2000; Waterston, 2005).

By playing an active role in global health research, health-care workers can help

inform policy in regions of political instability. There have been many examples

of such work by health-related nongovernmental organizations, which can set an

example for individual health-care professionals worldwide.

Medico-activist groups, including International Physicians for the Prevention

of Nuclear War (IPPNW) or Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), have acted as

front-runners in lobbying policymakers in conf‌lict regions for decades. After

winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, IPPNW have played an active role in the

global health effort. They did this by increasing dialogue between politicians and

the medical world, regarding the health burden imposed by conf‌licts on the

greater population (Waterston, 2005). Furthermore, PHR have utilized their

collective medical knowledge to examine war victims for abuses that violate

international or human rights law under the program Justice for Forensic Science

(Physicians for Human Rights, 2014). They also possess multimedia outlets,

including blogs and research reports, to help educate the wider public on their

f‌indings. By creating a culture whereby it is common for traditional health-care

workers to inform politicians based on their research f‌indings, the potential for

health-care professionals to inform domestic policies is evident.

Another noteworthy ex ample is underlined by San ta Barbara and Mac-

Queen (2004) who focus on the u se of health-care profess ionals as health-

related superordinat es to bridge peace. Here , medical aid workers ov ercome

the political focus of a co nf‌lict by concentrati ng on a specif‌ic, acute heal th issue

in the region. In 1995, this was successfully imp lemented in Sudan. After

presenting solid epidem iological research on th e burden of dracunculias is, a

World Medical & Health Policy, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2016

208

1948-4682 #2016 Policy Studies Organization

Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ.