Submission ID 131748
| Issue/Objective | Schools of public health aim to promote equity and inclusion. Translating these values into practice when discussing global conflicts requires a thoughtful evidence-based approach. As it's a moral imperative to address, mitigate and prevent public health catastrophes, remaining silent for fear of causing discomfort is not an acceptable option for health professionals - whose role includes advocacy. We therefore aimed to ascertain if we could transform a public health framework into a heuristic for sensitively and systematically analyzing the complex determinants of health in humanitarian crises. |
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| Methodology/Approach | We chose to focus on re-purposing the World Health Organization's "Driving Forces-Pressures-States-Exposures-Effects-Actions" (DPSEEA) framework, adapting the "Actions" component to reflect classroom teaching applications. We focused on Palestine, given the heart-wrenching live-streamed devastation, and our positionalities as a Palestinian and a Jewish public health scholar respectively. |
| Results | We were able to effectively use the DPSEEA to not only outline immediate health concerns in Palestine, and the exposures that led to these effects, but also to move beyond the immediate causes to explore how socio-political and environmental factors intertwine to create health inequities. This framework allowed us to reach consensus on what concepts and information to include at each level of the framework in order to offer necessary context for analyzing what is widely acknowledged as a genocide in Palestine, and to outline actions that could be taken from a public health perspective. These included actions related to the immense physical, mental, acute, chronic and intergenerational health effects (with over 72,000 dead, including at least 1,700 healthcare workers), and massive destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure (including shelter, food, water and sanitation systems), but also underlying racism and colonialism that drive this state of affairs. |
| Discussion/Conclusion | An established public health framework, as will be outlined in this presentation, can provide a much-needed guide for addressing the catastrophe in Palestine, and is an adaptable model for understanding and acting on humanitarian crises more broadly. By applying a structural and systemic analysis of health determinants, the re-purposed DPSEEA framework equips public health students with the tools to address global health inequities with greater rigour, professionalism, responsibility, compassion and impact. |
| Presenters and Affiliations | Annalee Yassi University of British Columbia Amira Aker Boston University |
