University global health policy expert and international colleagues reveal arms trade’s influence on health
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Global health policy expert Dr Nason Maani has contributed to a new British Medical Journal editorial series that uncovers the role of the arms trade in health and calls for more scrutiny of its health-harming activities and relationship with governments.
Dr Maani is part of an international group of expert contributors to the series ‘Arms industry as a commercial determinant of health’.
Arms industry tactics ‘subvert public health agendas’
The BMJ said the experts ‘lay out the direct and wider harms of arms and show how weapons manufacturers use commercial strategies to subvert public health agendas and shape discourse around security and violence’.
In a range of articles, the authors argue that ‘like the tobacco, alcohol and fossil fuel industries, the arms industry should be seen as a commercial determinant of health, where corporate practices matter as much as products when considering how industries can harm health’.
Challenging power imbalance against public health
Dr Maani is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Inequalities and Global Health Policy at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Science. He collaborated with Dr Mohammed Abba-Aji, Lecturer in Public Health at Washington University in St Louis, for their article, ‘Countering the arms industry as a commercial determinant of health.’
Their editorial outlines research and clinical priorities to challenge the growing power imbalance between the arms industry and public health interests.
Dr Maani said: “I am incredibly grateful to the BMJ for their leadership on this series, particularly at this time. As Dr Abba-Aji and I wrote in our editorial, just as it is not ‘anti-alcohol’ to interrogate the practices of alcohol marketers in deprived communities, it is not ‘anti-security’ to examine the commercial incentives, political practices, and direct and indirect harms associated with the arms industry. The articles in this series seek to do just that, and hopefully will help elevate and stimulate such research in the months and years ahead.”
Read Dr Maani’s article, ‘Countering the arms industry as a commercial determinant of health’.
Find the ‘Arms industry as a commercial determinant of health’ series home page here, with links to all articles.