With a long and celebrated experience of documenting how wars affect global health, members of the Nobel-prize winning Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) presented evidence of the monumental cost as well as severity of health complications occasioned by wars; the escalation in the numbers of war victims and how war situations have worsened global health.

When Evan Kanter adds up the costs of war, he doesn't only consider the cost of fighter jets and tanks, he also counts his patients at a veterans hospital in Seattle, where he works as a psychiatrist treating active-duty military personnel and veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Public policy and funding has yet to grasp war's heavy toll on non-soldiers as a public-health problem. Smart minds at the University of Washington's Department of Global Health and the Physicians for Social Responsibility appropriately seek to change that.

Co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility, the conference will define preventing war and reducing violence as an emerging area of study and practice for people in the global health field, how students and professionals can promote peace, and how to develop new global health leaders who are focused on that goal.

President-elect Marylou Noble co-authors piece on veterans' care.

A report released by PSR with Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) concludes that the mental and social trauma from the Iraq war will be with the U.S. for the lifetime of wounded soldiers. The fiscal costs for health care and disability benefits likely will exceed those for combat activities.