A Public Health Approach to Warfare

The field of public health aims to protect and promote the health and wellbeing of human populations. Warfare poses threats to human beings in many ways that the public health approach can help define and track through time. The impact of war on civilians is a particular feature of concern to public health experts, who have in recent years contributed to our general understanding of civilian morbidity and mortality in war by documenting numbers of people affected, describing patterns of morbidity and mortality, and identifying vulnerable risk groups. Among the particular technologies of warfare that are pervasively harmful to civilian populations, public health investigators have been especially concerned with the short and longer-term consequences of antipersonnel landmines and other explosive remnants of war. Yet despite the evidence, which public health methods have helped to accumulate, that warfare constitutes a devastating assault on human life, the field of public health has also been influenced in positive ways by military activity and experience. Advances in science (including technology), law, and social mobilization have been incorporated into public health practice and analytic frameworks. Public health strategies of prevention and mitigation are influenced by these advances and in turn offer options for policy engagement with all phases of warfare that might help to reduce the most severe impacts of war on civilian populations.