Peace through Health is a “thinking tool” for peace work by health professionals. We start with a “peace deficit” of catastrophic proportions – the projected appalling effects of the use of nuclear weapons on human populations. We then consider the possibilities of working from the health sector of society to deal with this. NWIP uses a variation of the strategies used by the founders of IPPNW and a radical redefinition of the “peace deficit” as a “health deficit”, thereby justifying vigorous action by workers from the health sector. This becomes health work, beyond citizen action.

Public health action of this kind is based on an implicit recognition of a human right to reasonably attainable levels of health, implying a moral responsibility of health workers to work to ensure this. NWIP, in an interesting way, calls on another implicit right, an intergenerational one, and the right of a younger generation not to be damaged by an older one. It evokes indignation that this has happened and that young people are being handed a world severely marred by the presence of tens of thousands of mass extermination weapons, together with the structures and cultures that would enable their use. (It is as if I passed on my farmland to my son as his inheritance, and said, “Oh, by the way, there are lots of landmines you will need to watch out for!”).

The NWIP presentations are made primarily to young health workers in training. They convey knowledge of the horrendous health effects of nuclear weapons, placing the problem clearly in the health arena. They try to explore the possibilities of action as health workers to reduce or remove this risk. As in many public health actions, this draws the actor into another arena, in this case, the arena of state security, and demands the acquisition of some knowledge to act intelligently and persuasively in this arena. The health worker needs to acquire further skills for this work, advocacy in writing and speaking and perhaps non-violent civil disobedience, and it is these skills that the NWIP seeks to convey to peers through trainings, dialogues and international confidence-building.