A peacekeeper a day keeps the doctor away? The positive impact of peacekeeping on local-level public health

Abstract Can peacekeeping improve public health in post-conflict regions? Supporting health care is not a directly mandated task for peacekeepers. I posit that peacekeeping should nonetheless expand health care access and availability through three main pathways. First, peacekeepers facilitate infrastructure (re)building, increasing available health care resources and enabling access to them. Second, expanding perceived security encourages civilians to travel to access care, which medical professionals are more likely available to provide. Third, peacekeepers directly address urgent health needs by supporting humanitarian aid delivery and conducting short-term health-related projects. I pair geocoded data on peacekeeping deployments with survey data on health care access and infrastructure from more than a million households in 32 African states between 1992 and 2022 to evaluate peacekeepers' impact. I find extremely robust support for the role of peacekeepers in supporting public health. Across multiple metrics, including proximity to clean water, treatment coverage for common yet potentially deadly conditions, vaccination access and maternal care, local peacekeeping deployments consistently correlate with substantially expanded health care access. These findings add a vital dimension to our understanding of how peacekeeping supports positive peace and long-term societal well-being in the wake of armed conflict.