The annual IPPNW European Student Conference was held from the 8th to 12th of April in Dublin. Roughly one hundred students from all over Europe and beyond attended the event. NWIP was given two slots in a hectic conference program; one two-hour workshop on “Health and Security” and then a “Training day” of 6 hours. There were about twenty participants for both of the days. The Health and Security workshop started with a controversial question; “If the overall goal is Health for all, which it is for many of us socially engaged medical students, should we study medicine, or should we rather go into studies of for example social-science?”. This was asked as a part of a game, where the participants were encouraged to argue both sides. 

The workshop was organized in an interactive style, with the participants working in small groups, discussing what is needed to achieve the overall goal of “Health for all”. The participants sketched out plans spanning from economic issues to security. We then explained “The Model of Change” and spoke about “Security”, and how nuclear weapons is a major part in this regard. The workshop was well received and I think we benefited from making it as interactive as we did. We also encouraged people to attend the NWIP-Training the next day. The training day followed the standardised procedure, which Caecilie and Richard have worked on and used many times educating students all over the world. I have myself participated in the training earlier, but this time I was in the “hot-seat”- they made me part of the training-crew for the session. This is one of the strategies of the project; to get new students involved, by making them work and challenging them as early as possible. Although I was not very experienced this gave me the opportunity to learn how to speak about the issues in front of others, and I have to say it was a tremendously valuable experience. Presenting an argument to others is a challenge as it forces you to broaden your knowledge of the topic to be able to formulate arguments. The training day was quite successful, and we recruited several new students to the project.

Rune Dahl