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Melanio L Leal, Mediating peace in times of war: a public health concern, Journal of Public Health, Volume 45, Issue 1, March 2023, Page e156, https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdac081
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Dear Editor
This is in response to the recently published editorial of Webster and Neal1 who speaks of the evident role of ‘public health professionals’ in their ‘vital role to play in mitigating the health consequences of war and contributing to the possibility of preventing conflicts’. When the world was about to enter into another phase of a post Covid-19 event, war triggers once more a peaceful and just society govern my moral concern for the integral development of the human person and its community. Yusuf and Anand (1998) speak in a suggested manner ‘that healthcare workers may indeed have something to offer to the understanding and eradication of war and that we should develop conceptual models about war which overlap with those for chronic diseases’.2 This correspondence offers to start this ‘model’ through the objective role of media in peace building and promotion, or I may call it as the ‘peace journalism approach’.
Galtung (2016) ‘proposes an approach to journalism that focuses on conflict transformation, and suggests a number of ways that peace journalism might be adopted’.3 Galtung paved the way to better understand the important role of media in peace promotion and peace building. McGoldrick and Lynch (2000), moreover, enumerated some means to practice peace journalism.4 Furthermore, Lee (2010) suggested in his study ‘that structural changes are needed for peace journalism to evolve into a viable, mainstream approach to news coverage of war and conflict’.5 In the previous editorial of Webster and Neal (Vol. 43, Issue 3), on ‘building resiliency for the future’, the editors speak of the concept of resiliency as to be ‘widely promoted in fields as diverse as the economy, national security, personal development and well-being’. The present context leads us to better understand the situation of the past toward a resilient future. However, war becomes its nemesis. It hinders a potential global movement of our shared-humanity in its perilous experience of the pandemic. Hence, peace journalism can be a tool to lead us back to the ‘promised land’—a Covid and war-free society. The here-and-now cannot be seized by the challenges that face our humanity today, which, as said, escalates some other major concerns and problems.
Peace is a public health concern. When war arises, it is by then that we continue in seeking policies and principles of eradicating global wars and famine by seeking solution in the faith and good will of humanity. Thus, everyone can be peace journalist in this sense, by mediating peace, of making the world livable again.