Opposing Forced Displacement and Nuclear War is a Professional Obligation for Healthcare Workers and Public Health...

Forced displacement and the looming threat of nuclear conflict are now among the most potent, preventable drivers of global morbidity and mortality. This editorial argues that health professionals, bound by ethical mandates to promote and preserve life, bear a positive duty not only to treat the downstream consequences of war but to confront the policies that generate them. We outline the cascading public-health harms that accompany mass displacement, including communicable-disease outbreaks, interruption of chronic care, gender-based violence, and intergenerational trauma. We contend that silence in the face of such structural violence constitutes professional complicity. The piece therefore calls on healthcare workers, public health institutions, and professional societies to produce and disseminate rigorous evidence on war-related health impacts, advocate for the cessation of hostilities and safe humanitarian corridors, refuse collaborations that militarize health systems, and embed peace-medicine and humanitarian-law training into their curricula. Healthcare workers can utilize academic spaces, including conferences, journals, and lectures, to speak, document, and share the realities of the consequences of war and its impact on population health. Neutrality, we suggest, must align with patients, not with powers perpetuating displacement and existential nuclear peril.