Dean Peacock remembers exactly where his mission began. Growing up in Cape Town with a doctor father and a lawyer mother, he witnessed firsthand how violence and injustice affect real lives. His mother defended the defenceless. His father saved them. The lesson was indelible.
Now, decades later, Peacock is a founding member of the Global Coalition for WHO Action on Gun Violencea network of more than 100 public health organisations, researchers, survivor advocates, and civil society partners from nearly 50 countries.
Their goal is simple but audacious: to make the World Health Organisation treat gun violence with the same urgency it applies to tobacco, road deaths, and infectious diseases.
A Lifelong Journey
Peacock’s social justice work began in 1985, working with homeless and runaway children in Nicaragua, Central America, and the United States.
“I saw how violence against mothers often pushed children into homelessness. That showed me how violence in the home can shape a child’s entire future,” he said.
That insightconnecting intimate partner violence to homelessness, to lost futureshas shaped his entire career. Violence, he learned, is never isolated. It ripples.
The Gap in Global Health
The coalition’s founding was driven by a glaring omission. Peacock and his colleagues conducted research that revealed two troubling facts:
First, in more than 3,200 global health resolutions adopted by the WHO since 1948, not one clearly mentions firearms.
Second, although the WHO spoke openly about gun violence as a health issue in the early 2000s, that focus has faded over the last decade.
“Guns are now mostly missing from WHO’s key plans on violence against women and children, suicide prevention, and even work on harmful industries,” Peacock said.
“In many places, gun violence remains one of the main causes of death for young men and a major factor in the killing of women, but the global health response has become quieter.”
The Toll
The numbers are staggering: every year, more than 250,000 people around the world die from gun violence. Yet global health leaders are not treating it with the urgency it deserves.
“We believe that needs to change. We started the coalition because the gap was too obvious to ignore,” Peacock said.
The Team
Peacock is quick to share credit. The coalition’s volunteer secretariat brings together decades of expertise:
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Steve Hargarten, a retired emergency medicine doctor and leading US gun violence researcher
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Mbuyiselo Botha, a South African gender equality and disability rights advocate, and himself a survivor of gun violence
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Pierrette Kengela, a former emergency and trauma nurse who treated gun injuries in the Democratic Republic of Congo and is now a public health leader across Africa
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Keira Seidenberg, a graduate student at UCT’s School of Public Health
The Public Health Approach
Peacock is adamant that gun violence is not an unsolvable problem. “Public health has tools that work. We have reduced tobacco use. We have improved road safety. We have tackled epidemics.”
“There is no reason gun violence cannot also be addressed with strong public health leadership.”
A Preventable Crisis
The coalition’s core message is simple: gun violence is preventable. It is not an inevitable feature of modern life. It is a crisis that can be addressed with the same evidence-based, public health-driven strategies that have reduced smoking, made roads safer, and controlled infectious disease outbreaks.
For Peacock, it’s personal. The boy who watched his parents protect and heal has grown into a man determined to do the same on a global scale. The mission is clear. The tools exist. Now, he says, the world just needs to use them.
