EUPHA’s Ethics in Public Health Section, in collaboration with the Global Network for Academic Public Health (GNAPH), the Association of Schools of Public Health in Europe (ASPHER), and the Faculty of Public Health, convened a significant round table summit on 18 June 2025 at the Royal College of Physicians in London.
The event brought together public health leaders, ethico-legal scholars, and policymakers from across Europe, the United States, and Africa. Colleagues from Ukraine, Israel, and Sudan were sadly unable to attend due to crises in their home countries.
In a special video message for the summit, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, reflected on the inextricable link between health and peace, stating:
Peace is the best medicine… without peace, there can be no health.
Participants acknowledged the turbulent times we are living through and reaffirmed the moral responsibility of public health professionals to contribute meaningfully to health, peace, and responses to today’s interlinked crises.
Key outcomes
There was agreement to establish a community of learning, collaboration, and practice to advance the agenda in areas including:
- Creating code of ethics and professional conduct for public health professionals and institutions
- Education and training in public health ethics and law
- Understanding and addressing moral distress and injury among health workforce
- Law and ethics for climate action
- Health Peace Practitioners Programme
- Collaborate to learn, reflect and work together to advance to advance the discourse, scholarship and practice in public health ethics, law and right based approaches to build healthy communities and betterment of betterment of the world
