ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the peace through health (PtH) tools that health professionals can use as they seek to help countries emerging out of conflict. This chapter provides examples of health professionals utilizing these tools since the field began in the 1980s. Dr Goldfield begins by providing a background section presenting sociological theories that underlie PtH and a historical introduction to the term, together with the definition of PtH terms. He then maps the impact of conflict on health (in its various dimensions) and the impact of health interventions on peace and conflict dynamics. The PtH tools that he analyzes include health diplomacy, limiting the destructiveness of war, communication of knowledge, evocation of altruism, personalizing the enemy, solidarity and support, social healing, and health to peace or public health to public trust.
Tragically, all the interventions discussed in this chapter are the same ones that form the critical underpinnings of the work that health professionals must engage in if we are to address the increased—not decreasing, as is typically researched—conflict, and consequent fragility, in the United States. This increased fragility and what health professionals can do to address it constitute the subject of the remainder of this book.
