Teaching Peace as Essential Prevention

At last year's APHA convention a paper was presented which challenged Schools of Public Health and allied disciplines to actively incorporate strategies for peace promotion within their curriculum. Presented by Shelley White, Ph.D, MPH, the paper engendered an enthusiastic response resulting in a consortium of schools of public health, nursing and medicine from the across the U.S. and abroad committed to working together to standardize core course content. This initiative coincided with the efforts of faculty within the College of Nursing at University of Illiois at Chicago to revise the curriculum for the MSN/MPH degree. While there was generalized agreement that courses should integrate social determinants/disparities in health care, including peace promotion/war prevention among these determinants is not so universally accepted. In this presentation, the author, who is a public health nurse and Quaker, will propose that war, in the words of Dr. Gino Strada, is "the greatest threat to public health" and as such, from a public health perpective,the cultivation of peace must be actively taught and modeled as the logical preventitive strategy. Additionally, the high cost of war--economically, psychologically and physically-- must be examined in the light of its impact upon primary health and the welfare of the community. Discussion on the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration around the theme of peace promotion will be encouraged.