Humanitarian Health in Conflict and Violence Settings

Humanitarian crises pose a particular challenge for public health interventions, given the acute health needs, the dynamic contextual setting, and, in some cases, exacerbating external factors such as adverse climatic conditions or political instability. Humanitarian organizations have well-tested packages for basic aid and assistance during crises, including WASH and vaccine campaigns for priority childhood diseases. However, these standard packages may not adequately address the disparities of care across distinct affected communities or populations (i.e. distinctions between internally-displaced persons, refugees, majority/minority groups, etc.), nor be adapted to specific disease conditions, such as emerging infectious disease outbreaks, and/or long-term, costly care for chronic non-communicable diseases. Conflict and violence settings, in particular, are recognized as driving disease emergence whilst simultaneously disrupting health systems, reducing the ability of internal and external partners to provide emergency health services. This leads to a response-driven mindset that can ignore capacity strengthening as well as local creativity, despite the importance of these factors for future health system recovery and resilience. Organizations, individuals, and governmental partners working at the front lines of humanitarian health in conflict and violence settings may benefit from opportunities to share information on successful approaches and lessons learned.

Current and emerging challenges in humanitarian health such as pandemic preparedness, non-communicable disease prevention and treatment, and gender-sensitive solutions, require new and innovative solutions. This Research Topic seeks to address knowledge gaps in humanitarian health, with an emphasis on conflict and violence settings, and provide opportunities for academic researchers, humanitarian practitioners, and other key partners to share information on successful approaches and lessons learned, to improve health and well-being, but also specifically to strengthen health systems capacities as part of the recovery process, to advance long-term and transformative resilience.

This Research Topic welcomes submissions in the following areas:
• Operational research on priority health issues in humanitarian crises
• Multisectoral approaches for public health crisis responses
• Capacity strengthening for health in humanitarian/conflict settings
• Implementation approaches for long-term health systems recovery
• Local creativity as drivers for resilience in conflict settings
• Challenges in treatment and prevention of non-communicable diseases in humanitarian crises/conflict settings
• Descriptions of or studies on reporting and communication of health needs and priorities between humanitarian, host country, and/or other partners
• Health risk communication and community engagement in conflict settings
• Best practices for designing and implementing response packages for infectious disease outbreaks or pandemic preparedness and response in humanitarian/conflict settings

Other topics will be considered provided they fit the overall theme of the Research Topic.