“Welcome to the fight. Welcome to the movement. Your mission begins now.”
That was the opening message to 6,000 public health advocates at the annual meeting in DC of the American Public Health Association (APHA). The 6,000 were painfully aware of fired public health workers and knew that some 42 million low-income Americans are at risk of losing some or all of the food stamp program that helps feed them—SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Trump personnel and funding cuts jeopardize people’s health. Ann Suellentrop, MS RN, vice chair of PeaceWorks KC and retired pediatric nurse, is attending APHA’s Nov. 2-5 gathering and sends us these photos and reflections. THANKS, Ann!
Overview. Why would Ann, a nuclear abolition activist, attend a public health conference? The answer is that not only are nuclear bombs bad for public health, but all the steps in making them are dangerous, including the end result, containing nuclear waste. The entire nuclear enterprise is deadly and dangerous, causing cancers and genetic damage.
As Ann attended the opening session, the presenters spoke about the hardship public health is enduring under this political administration. Topics such as communicable diseases, chronic diseases, and women’s and children’s issues were top issues being discussed. These public health leaders were discussing how to build back and improve public health after COVID, the changes under President Trump, and the technological revolution underway with AI. Ann noted that many of the students she met were studying IT as well as public health.
New nuclear arms race. All the progressive caucuses of APHA were there, and Ann told them all about the KC Plant doubling in size (the KC National Security Campus, that makes 80% of the electromagnetic and mechanical parts for US nuclear weapons) and the plutonium pit hearings coming in the spring—the new 21st century nuclear arms race. Ann explained that a coalition of groups from the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) and others sued the federal government (NNSA—the National Nuclear Security Administration) under the National Environmental Policy Act about their plan to make 80 plutonium pits per year for the next 50 years. This amounts to a new nuclear arms race. Los Alamos would make 30 per year and a new site, the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina would make 50 per year. Kansas City would undoubtedly make the accompanying mechanical and electrical parts to go with the pits.
The ANA coalition won the suit, and a settlement was reached this past January for hearings to be held in the 5 cities with nuclear production sites pertaining to plutonium pit production: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, Los Alamos in New Mexico, the KC National Security Campus (KCNSC) in Kansas City, SRS in South Carolina, and Washington DC.
War. There was a session on War and Public Health which made this point: War is bad for public health, especially women’s and children’s health. Presenters from around the world said that at war sites, more than 80% of health facilities get destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of women and girls are raped.
Dr. Laura Nellums of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health presented “Priority Infectious and Mental Health Conditions and Their Mechanisms in Armed Conflict Settings: An Exploratory Qualitative Study.” She says, “There are lots of health problems in war.”
One of Dr. Nellums’ slides notes, “In 2024, conflicts resulted in 233,597 direct deaths, a 30% increase from 2023.” Another of her slides uses information from the World Health Organization in 2008: “Insecurity, displacement, destruction of social and health facilities, and targeting of health personnel makes health services inaccessible.”
Dr. Mohammed Jibriel presented the research “Sudan: The Forgotten Crisis.” He has lost family members in the conflict because of the destruction of the health care system in Sudan. Eight million people have been displaced. He spoke of gender-based violence, women kidnapped and enslaved, and mental health problems, especially with women and children. In Sudan’s capital city, Al Fashir, there is genocide and starvation. Dr. Jibriel nearly started crying when he talked about this. He said Sudan is not covered by media like Gaza and Ukraine are, due to racism, Islamophobia, colonialism, and because of being viewed as not very pertinent to US political interests.
Dr. Mulugeta Gebregziabher described war conditions in Tigray, the northern-most state in Ethiopia. He presented research showing, for example, that in a war-torn country, screening and treatment for HPV-caused cervical cancer is low.
These doctors and others interviewed health care workers, some in places where conflict had gone on for years. They found a wide variety of infectious and mental health diseases, as well as epilepsy and seizures. Prolonged psychological distress weakens the immune system, increasing vulnerability to infectious disease, it’s believed. Dr. Gebregziabher said that Gaza is Sudan, and Ukraine is Tigray—to highlight that all war victims are human beings.
The last speaker on war and public health, Dr. Kathryn McDonald, MPh, talked about cluster bombs in Laos. She went to Laos when she was 19 and later studied the subject of cluster bombs there. The after-effects of war are long-lasting, as unexploded ordinances kill and maim children who mistake them for toys. She added that this will certainly also be a problem in Gaza after the conflict ends.
—Photos by Ann Suellentrop unless otherwise noted. © 2025, Ann Suellentrop & Jane Stoever, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License.