Saturday, February 15, 2025
HomeHealth & ClimateYale Center on Climate Change and Health partners with global coalition to...

Yale Center on Climate Change and Health partners with global coalition to support health care workers

Yale School of Public Health Joins Global Coalition to Protect Health Workers in Conflict Zones

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) has recently joined forces with the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition (SHCC), an international coalition dedicated to protecting health workers, services, and infrastructure in conflict areas around the world. The SHCC is comprised of more than 40 prominent humanitarian organizations, including Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and various universities’ humanitarian and human rights centers.

Members of the SHCC work together to collect data on attacks against health workers worldwide in an effort to hold the perpetrators of those attacks accountable. The Yale HRL is a member of the SHCC’s Steering Committee, which develops an annual report of the compiled data. Dr. Danielle Poole, ScD, MPH, the HRL’s director of research, spearheaded the Yale HRL’s acceptance into the coalition, emphasizing the critical importance of the coalition’s work given the multiple conflicts and humanitarian crises currently happening around the globe.

Dr. Poole highlighted the significance of accurate and timely reporting of attacks on health care, stating that organizations like the coalition have the scientific expertise and resources to make a real difference. The Yale HRL’s expertise in gathering detailed information from satellite imagery and various open source platforms will help the coalition document attacks on health care facilities in areas where on-the-ground observations are difficult.

Dr. Kaveh Khoshnood, PhD, MPH, faculty director of the Yale HRL, expressed the team’s enthusiasm for being a valuable contributing partner within the coalition. By combining HRL’s analytical expertise with SHCC’s advocacy and policy work, they aim to contribute to a more robust global response to attacks on health care and ensure that perpetrators are held accountable.

Incidents like the widespread damage to health care facilities in Sudan’s Khartoum State and Mariupol, Ukraine, as documented by Dr. Poole and her team, underscore the urgent need for organizations like the SHCC. In its 2023 annual report, the SHCC documented a significant increase in incidents of violence against health care systems worldwide.

For those interested in learning more about international efforts to protect health workers in conflict areas, the Yale School of Public Health is hosting the Leaders in Public Health Speaker Series on Feb. 5. Dr. J. Stephen Morrison, PhD, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC, will be the featured guest. Dr. Morrison is a global health security expert and author of the award-winning documentary ‘The New Barbarianism,’ which examines violence directed toward health sector workers and facilities in conflict zones.

The event will take place from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. ET in Winslow Auditorium in the Laboratory of Epidemiology and Public Health (LEPH) building at 60 College St., New Haven, and is co-sponsored by the Yale Institute for Global Health.

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