Blog: Giving Peace a Chance!

More than 135 million people across the globe need humanitarian assistance and armed conflicts are a leading reason for this (UNOCHA 2018). Conflict has startling direct and indirect effects on health, often exacerbating existing poverty and inequalities. However, the evidence around this is limited and causal links are often questionable. 

To help address this evidence gap, IGDC Member Rodrigo Moreno-Serra, Associate Professor in Global Health Economics in the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York, has conducted a study in Colombia measuring the health consequences to expectant mothers of exposure to conflict during pregnancy. Colombia has faced an internal armed conflict for more than six decades; however, from July 2015, it saw a significant decline in violence due to a ceasefire that preceded the 2016 peace accord. This provided the opportunity for Dr Moreno-Serra’s study to assess causality through regression discontinuity methods, using rich data available for all pregnancies over a long period of time for the entire population. 

This study showed that the Colombian peace process, by reducing the average number of total conflict events women were exposed to during pregnancy, resulted in substantially lower rates of stillbirths and perinatal deaths. This is thought to be due to reduced maternal stress, as well as the mitigation of other social impacts of conflict, including alcohol consumption by pregnant mothers as a coping mechanism, and barriers to prenatal care access [The impact of civil conflict on child health: Evidence from Colombia].

	“This provides evidence of the health benefits that peace processes can deliver and that they are worth pursuing.” Associate Professor Rodrigo Moreno-Serra.

Find out more about the methodology and findings of Dr Moreno-Serra’s study in his keynote address at the 7th Austrian Health Economics Association Conference: Looking beyond borders: Global health economics.