Friday, April 12

Event summary

We are faced with an emerging set of public health challenges due to war and conflict, as a result of political instability and climate catastrophe. Injury and death, and the physical and psychological impact of violence on individual and population health cannot be underestimated, especially for the most marginalised in society, and across generations. The impact on infrastructure can devastate health systems and economies. Consequently, the contribution of public health to promote peace and equity has never been more important. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the need for a new set of core public health competencies to meet these emerging challenges.  ASPHER’s curriculum review has been guided by the need to train tomorrow’s workforce in high level communication, the role of the built environment, 21^st century field epidemiology, criminal justice, disaster preparedness and health system resilience and sustainability. The specific challenges of war and conflict for public health will be addressed in this discussion. There will be an expert panel and Q&A session with the online audience. We understand the importance of building vital capacity amongst public health professionals together with affected communities. The panel will include public health curriculum design experts. They will describe ASPHER’s curriculum approach so far, touching on the new public health realities and the ethics of public health. We will engage the audience in a discussion of how these relate to our development of a War, Conflict and Public Health curriculum. What should  public health professionals do to enhance their skills in preventing violence, responding to violent conflict, and in recovery and rehabilitation from conflict situations?  We will set out an agenda for a series of subsequent meetings to discuss the areas of work needed in more detail.

Programme for the meeting: 

12.00-12.05     Introduction by the chair:  Amanda Mason-Jones, Associate Professor in Global Public Health, University of York and ASPHER Emergencies Task Force.

12.05-12.10     The ASPHER core curriculum programme: Teaching conflict, war and public health:  what have we found so far?   Mary Codd, Director, UCD Master of Public Health (MPH) & EuroPubHealth (EPH+) Programmes

ASPHER Executive Board / ASPHER Public Health Core Curriculum Programme Lead.

12.10-12.20     War, conflict and public health Mukesh Kapila, Professor Emeritus, Global Health and Humanitarian Affairs, University of Manchester.

12.20-12.30     Public health preparedness Dorit Nitzan, Ben Gurion University and formerly WHO European lead for emergency preparedness. 

12.30-12.40     Teaching conflict, war and public health Colette Cunningham, University of Cork and World Federation of Public Health Associations, Public Health Emergency Preparedness lead. 

12.40-12.50     Public health student’s views on teaching war and conflict Walaa AlAbssi, MPH student, UCD.

12.50-13.00     Preventing violence, from local to global   John Middleton, Vice President, Global Network for Academic Public Health.

13.00-13.25     Open Discussion

13.25-13.30     Chair’s conclusions and next steps Amanda Mason-Jones, Associate Professor in Global Public Health, University of York and ASPHER Emergencies Task Force.

Register here 

Event format  Online

Organizer contact information* lore.leighton@aspher.org