Do Health Programs Contribute to Keeping the Peace? A Scientific Analysis

The role of health problems and programs to address problems in keeping the peace has not been scientifically analyzed. We sought to mitigate this gap in knowledge.

We examined hundreds of conflicts in a robust international database (NAVCO 2.0) for the presence of health programs by conflict parties and were unable to demonstrate a significant statistical correlation between the presence of a health program and peace. Using this analysis and a comprehensive international database of health conditions (the Global Burden of Disease), we obtained Institutional Review Board approval and undertook a matched case-control analysis. We identified 14 countries with new-onset conflict as our cases and 52 similar countries without conflict during the same year as our controls. We calculated the association between conflict status and the prevalence of 254 different health conditions among the case and control nations.

None of the 254 health conditions had changes in prevalence that correlated with the conflict status of that nation. None of those common health conditions is therefore a predictive "leading indicator" of conflict in this study.

Without such an association or causal link, the role of health programs in peacekeeping and "stability operations" remains ambiguous. Negative findings do not mean that there is no connection between health programs and peace, and further study should be done. Our results have implications for the value of global health engagement missions.