Preventing War and Promoting Peace: A Guide for Health Professionals

Preventing War and Promoting Peace: A Guide for Health Professionals is an interdisciplinary study of how pervasive militarism creates a propensity for war through the influence of academia, economic policy, the defense industry, and the news media. Comprising contributions by academics and practitioners from the fields of public health, medicine, nursing, law, sociology, psychology, political science, and peace and conflict studies, as well as representatives from organizations active in war prevention, the book emphasizes the underlying preventable causes of war, particularly militarism, and focuses on the methods health professionals can use to prevent war. Preventing War and Promoting Peace provides hard-hitting facts about the devastating health effects of war and a broad perspective on war and health, presenting a new paradigm for the proactive engagement of health professions in the prevention of war and the promotion of peace.

William H. Wiist holds a Courtesy Faculty appointment in Global Health at the College of Public Health and Human Sciences, Oregon State University. He previously served as Professor of Health Sciences and Senior Scientist in the Interdisciplinary Health Policy Institute at Northern Arizona University. He has been published in numerous journals, and is editor or author of The Bottom Line on Public Health (2010), Case Studies on Corporations and Global Health Governance (2016), Researching Corporations and Global Health Governance (2016); and chapters in Sick Societies (1992). He is a member of the American Public Health Association and the Public Health Working Group on the Primary Prevention of War.

Shelley K. White is Assistant Professor of Public Health and Sociology and Program Director of the MPH in Health Equity at Simmons College, Boston. She is past Director of the Youth Ambassadors for Peace Program, in partnership with the Under-Secretary-General for the United Nations' Decade for Children and Armed Conflict. She founded and chairs the Public Health Working Group on Primary Prevention of War. She is co-editor of Sociologists in Action: Sociology, Social Change and Social Justice (2013) and Sociologists in Action on Inequalities: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality (2014), and has been published in numerous journals.