IPPNW was founded in 1980 by physicians from the United States and the Soviet Union who shared a common commitment to the prevention of nuclear war between their two countries. Citing a principle of the medical profession—that doctors have an obligation to prevent what they cannot treat—a global federation of physician experts came together to explain the medical and scientific facts about nuclear war to policy makers and to the public, and to advocate for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the world's arsenals. Founding co-presidents
Bernard Lown of the United States and
Yevgeniy Chazov of the Soviet Union were joined by other early IPPNW leaders including
James E. Muller,
Ioan Moraru of Romania,
Eric Chivian and Herb Abrams of the US and Mikhail Kuzin and Leonid Ilyin of the Soviet Union. They organized a team to conduct scientific research based on data collected by Japanese colleagues who had studied the effects of the
atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and drew upon their knowledge of the medical effects of burn, blast, and
radiation injuries. and the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. In recent years, IPPNW and its affiliates have drawn new attention to the health and environmental effects of uranium mining and processing, conducting community health surveys in India and challenging Australia's plans to expand its uranium export industry. In 2010, the federation's international council passed a resolution calling for a global ban on uranium mining because of the dangers it poses to health and the environment. IPPNW has also studied a nuclear danger within the medical profession—the use of highly enriched uranium in reactors that produce medical isotopes—and has campaigned for the conversion of those vulnerable reactors to non-weapons-grade uranium. IPPNW launched the
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in 2007, and is now the lead medical NGO campaigning for a global treaty to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons, along with more than 200 humanitarian, environmental, human rights, peace and development organizations in more than 80 countries. ICAN went on to receive the 2017
Nobel Prize for peace. In the 1990s, IPPNW expanded its scope to address the continuum of armed violence that undermines health and security. IPPNW is committed to ending war and to addressing the causes of armed conflict from a public health perspective. The global campaign to ban landmines marked IPPNW's first major entry into the non-nuclear arena. The federation became engaged in addressing small arms violence in 2001 when it launched Aiming for Prevention, which has since broadened to include the public health dimensions of all types of armed violence. Aiming for Prevention has been driven by IPPNW affiliates from the global South—primarily Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and South Asia—whose members live and work in areas where armed violence is a constant threat and consumes significant portions of health care budgets. As part of Aiming for Prevention, IPPNW participated in a broad-based global coalition of civil society organizations that campaigned successfully for passage of the
Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). IPPNW is an active participant in the
World Health Organization's Violence Prevention Alliance, and coordinates the
International Action Network on Small Arms (
IANSA) Public Health Network. Continuing medical education courses in the emerging field of peace through health have been developed by IPPNW with university affiliates in Norway, Denmark, the UK, and Canada. IPPNW supports and encourages academic work to advance the understanding of the interconnections between peace and health. ==See also==