Rethinking medical education: introducing peace curricula in medical schools

War and violence have long been recognized for having major negative effects on population well-being. Since Murray and Lopez’s landmark paper (Murray and Lopez 1997) declaring that war and violence would be the eighth leading cause of death and disability around the world in 2020, and a UN General Assembly recommending that peace education be included in all disciplines, medical students have led efforts to insert the issue of peace in the medical curriculum, developing publications to explain the merits and through direct advocacy (Arya, Buhmann, Melf 2007). Over the past few decades, a movement has developed toward teaching peace to students in health sciences. At the end of the 1980s, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War developed a curriculum on nuclear war for medical schools and later more generally for peace (IPPNW 1988, 1993). After the first university course on Peace through Health began at McMaster University in Canada 15 years ago, courses on Global Health and Health and Human Rights incorporating the study of peace and war issues have been designed for public health schools throughout the United States of America and Europe; however there has been little movement in that direction within medical schools (Arya 2004a). This commentary describes general developments in medical education including those towards social accountability and human values, transformative learning and competency-based frameworks. It explains how peace is already reflected in topics such as mental health, communication and public health. It further describes how, with proper curriculum design and teaching strategies, peace through health education can be incorporated to enhance physician competencies, both in the Global North and South. The addition of explicit topics and – even more important – changes in orientation and approach to reflect peace studies and principles will mean more