Global Public Health

Geopolitics and Health in Conflict and Displacement

Health in conflict and displacement is shaped not only by violence, mobility, and humanitarian need, but also by geopolitical forces that determine how resources, people, information, and assistance move across borders. Strategic rivalry, economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, securitized borders, shifting aid priorities, and weakening multilateral cooperation can influence access to medicines and vaccines, continuity of essential health services, humanitarian access, and health-system capacity. These pressures affect conflict-affected populations as well as refugees, internally displaced persons, returnees, and host communities. They may also persist after active fighting subsides, as political confrontation, sanctions, restricted mobility, or international isolation continue to reshape health systems and the channels through which populations receive care and external assistance.

This focus is increasingly important as armed conflicts and forced displacement intersect with geopolitical fragmentation, changing patterns of development and humanitarian assistance, attacks on health care, and restrictions on cross-border movement. Rather than addressing the governance of public health emergencies in general, this Collection focuses specifically on conflict and displacement and on the transnational geopolitical processes that shape health within these settings. Public health research often examines conflict-related outcomes or displaced populations without fully accounting for these wider political and institutional forces, while analyses of geopolitics and global health frequently remain at the level of diplomacy, security, or governance. Bringing these perspectives together can show how international power relations alter health-system capacity, access to care, and population health, and why similar crises may produce different health consequences across settings.

This Article Collection invites empirical, comparative, methodological, and policy-oriented research on the geopolitical determinants of health in conflict-affected and displaced populations. Relevant topics include sanctions and political isolation; geopolitical rivalry and shifts in international assistance; humanitarian access and attacks on health care; health diplomacy and cross-border cooperation; border regimes and migration policy; health-system disruption and reconstruction; access to essential services among refugees, internally displaced persons, returnees, and host populations; vaccination and infectious-disease control; continuity of non-communicable disease care; mental health and psychosocial consequences; sexual, reproductive, maternal, child, and adolescent health; health-worker mobility; and the governance and political economy of humanitarian health responses. We also welcome innovative approaches to evidence generation where data are scarce, disrupted by conflict, or politically restricted.

Keywords: Geopolitics, Armed conflict, Forced displacement, Health Systems, Global health governance

Prof. Yo Han Lee MD, MPH, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at Korea University College of Medicine and Director of the Institute for Health and Social Affairs on the Korean Peninsula (IHSAK), Korea University. His research focuses on North Korean health, health systems, global health policy, and population mental health. His recent work examines health under geopolitical isolation and sanctions, international health cooperation across political divides, and health disparities among North Korean refugee populations. He also studies evidence generation in settings where health data are limited, politically restricted, or difficult to access.

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo desk assessment and peer review if they can pass the desk assessments as part of our standard editorial process; the Guest Advisor for this Collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member).

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is 31 July 2027.

Please contact Saniya Qureshi at saniya.qureshi@taylorandfrancis.com  with any queries and discount codes regarding this Article Collection.