The Scope of Peace Epidemiology

Background: War and conflict (hereafter: war) is one of the mostserious health threats in the world. According to a globalforecasting report, war and violent conflicts would be of the topten major causes of DALYs by 2020. Any proper war-preventingprogram need to be established based on a comprehensiveoverview of causes (macro and micro) of the war as a healththreat, as well as it health effects. Epidemiology, as a tool forstudying the health events, could be the most responsible forproviding robust evidence on the causes and effects of the war.Methods: A comprehensive web search was done using relatedkeywords including war , conflict , and violence .Conceptual framework of peace epidemiology was drawnaccording to the retrieved documents. Then, the scope of peaceepidemiology was discussed in several focus groups.Results and conclusion: War has a natural history, extendedfrom an inter-group disagreement to a heavy violent armed warincluding sanctions. Although war is mostly a man-made healththreat, in some cases, it may be triggered by the forces of nature.Discrepancies, cultural differences, deprivations, inequality, andpolitical greed may be upstream determinants of the war, but notits apparent determinants. War has nuisance and sever healtheffects in its any stage. Short-term visible health effects of thewar, i.e. physical harms, are only the tip of the iceberg of healtheffects of the war. Societal origins of war and the effect of war onthe social health of war-affected societies need to be investigated.Epidemiologists have to wend two long roads, if they accept theirprofessional responsibility to prevent and control the war, and thehealth effects of war.

Keywords:

War , Epidemiology