By Jill Pease
Efforts to bring about peace don’t always have to be on a global scale. Small, incremental changes can have a big impact over time.
That was one of the lessons Alexandra Rodriguez, M.P.H., a doctoral candidate in public health with a concentration in social and behavioral sciences at the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions, took home from the United Nations 5th Global Peace Summit of Emerging Leaders held last month in Bangkok, Thailand.
Rodriguez was one of 400 delegates from more than 60 countries selected to network with other early career scholars from across multiple disciplines and learn about strategies for peace from leading activists.
“The summit really opened my eyes to how policy can be mobilized for sustainable, peaceful change,” Rodriguez said. “Hearing from genocide survivors and from people who are actively doing deeply complex policy work in regions that have been navigating long-standing conflict for decades felt powerful and energizing.”
Rodriguez’s own scholarship has focused on arts and public health, specifically how creative engagement can support mental health. During the summit, she was surprised at how frequently the role of the arts was discussed in lectures and panels. For example, a peace advocate from Darfur, Sudan, shared some of the poems she had written about the conflict in that region.
“She talked about how when she reads her poems, especially in policy or negotiation settings, she finds that by approaching people with her humanity, they’re able to respond with humanity,” Rodriguez said.
Delegates are considered U.N. peace ambassadors through 2026 and summit organizers challenged delegates to develop their own action plans, individually and collectively, to bring about peace in their communities.
“In my working group, I shared how I’ve been engaged in advocacy work at the intersection of arts and mental health, and how this experience has offered me a new lens into the ways the arts further connect to peace,” Rodriguez said. “In the current national and international political climate, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for finding shared humanity, understanding different people’s lived experiences, and considering how that could shape tangible policy change.”