The impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Palestinian health care professionals working in Occupied Palestinian Territory

The past few years have seen a dramatic worldwide rise in limits on, attacks on, and even killings of health care workers trying to provide health care to injured individuals engaged in conflict. In addition, and most tragically, health care workers are increasingly targeted for even providing preventive services such as vaccinations or, in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, just because they are health care professionals. This chapter, focusing on one conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, will review limits placed and attacks on Palestinian health professionals that have occurred since 2000 from two different perspectives. The literature we reference includes third-sector reports, both local and international, United Nations perspectives, and Israeli and Palestinian governmental responses to these limits and attacks on Palestinian health care professionals. In this chapter we detail Israeli limits, including attacks on health care professionals, which, following the Geneva Conventions, should not be occurring. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Can health professionals effectively engage in "healing across the divides" in a setting of ongoing conflict?

Peace Building through Health (PtH) should be in decline. What with increasing attacks on health professionals, only made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, and significant challenges to humanitarian aid in general over the past two decades, one would expect that fewer health professionals would be willing to put themselves in harm's way. And with more refugees in the world today than at any time since World War II, it would not be surprising if fewer health professionals proved willing to persist in a practice akin to banging their heads against a brick wall. But the reality is that health professionals will continue to respond to a moral calling to do this work even if some consider it quixotic or useless, let alone unnecessarily dangerous. For those of us health professionals who will at least try to mitigate the impact of conflicts and the humanitarian crises that emerge from them, the aim of this chapter is to outline recent challenges and opportunities in the PtH field, with a specific focus on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Fitting Community-Centered Population Health (CCPH) Into the Existing Health Care Delivery Patchwork: The Politics of CCPH.

The COVID-19 crisis has nakedly exposed the problems and huge holes in the health care system of the United States. For today, we need to address the current pandemic from the point of view of both control and suppression. But such efforts could also provide insights into a post-pandemic restructuring of health care. If one or several states succeed in addressing the COVID pandemic together with an associated modest economic resurgence, citizens could develop the trust in state leadership necessary to finally make fundamental changes in our health care system. Such change is a once in a century opportunity.

COVID-19 Crisis Creates Opportunities for Community-Centered Population Health: Community Health Workers at the Center.

Dealing with the COVID-19 coronavirus requires a coordinated transnational effort. We propose a 2-stage state-led effort that utilizes community health workers (CHWs). We spell out what is beginning to occur in states to control and suppress COVID-19. In the second stage, we suggest working with these CHWs as a key element in the next evolution of our health care system: community-centered population health.