The Red Cross’s Public Health Turn

Explores the 1919 Cannes Medical Conference’s pivotal role in transforming the Red Cross movement’s activities from war-related work to peacetime humanitarian and public health initiatives, highlighting the conference's significant yet largely undocumented legacy.

This book explores the Cannes Medical Conference of April 1919 and its long-lasting impacts in the humanitarian space. In the aftermath of the First World War, as the world order was being redesigned, this conference served to shift the Red Cross movement towards peacetime and public health work.

This book is about the Cannes Medical Conference of April 1919 and its long-lasting impacts in the humanitarian space. In the aftermath of the First World War, as the world order was being redesigned, this conference served to shift the Red Cross movement towards peacetime and public health work. The book examines the origins, course and consequences of the Cannes Medical Conference, and its wider legacy within the Red Cross movement: a legacy which is very significant yet almost completely undocumented. The book demonstrates that this medical conference was a watershed moment that served to pivot the Red Cross movement across the world, from war and conflict-related activities to peacetime programs such as relief, disease and disaster management.