Spring 2026 Environmental Health Committee Webinar Series 

Title: Health and Environmental Impacts of Nuclear Weapons and War
Date: Tuesday, April 7, 2026
Time: 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM (PST) 
Location: Zoom
Physician Moderator: Cindy Russell, MD
Speaker: Robert Gould, MD
 

Over 80 years since the atomic bombings that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we face the dawn of a new global nuclear arms race that compounds the climate and pandemic threats to human survival. Today, the nine nuclear-armed states possess over 12,000 nuclear weapons, hundreds of which are on hair-trigger alert. This presentation will describe the manifold threats posed by: current global programs to expand and modernize these nuclear weapons arsenals; the abrogation of international treaties to reduce the dangers; and areas of heightened great-power confrontation. While ignoring our climate emergency, the U.S. government plans to spend over $4 million an hour over the next 30 years to “modernize” our nuclear weapons arsenal, with profound opportunity costs to public and environmental health. Alternative visions for human survival are offered by the global movement to abolish nuclear weapons embodied in the 2017 UN Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) In advancing this goal, Physicians for Social Responsibility and coalition partners working within the “Back from the Brink” and similar campaigns have passed anti-nuclear weapons resolutions in many U.S. municipalities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles. Prospects for connecting such campaigns with wider popular movements seeking to transform U.S. and global priorities in the direction of climate, environmental and social justice necessary for global survival will also be explored. 

Biography  Dr. Gould
Robert M. Gould, MD is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where he works as a Collaborator with the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE). From 1981 until 2012, Dr. Gould worked as a pathologist at Kaiser Hospital in San Jose, California. He has been President of San Francisco-Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) since 1989, and was a member of the National Board of PSR from 1993 through 2022, serving as President in 2003 and 2014. Dr. Gould currently is the North American Vice-President of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, and in October 2024 he participated in the IPPNW World Congress held in Nagasaki commemorating the 80th anniversary of the nuclear bombings that destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Dr. Gould also serves as Chairperson of the Peace Caucus in Affiliation with the American Public Health Association (APHA), and has co-authored more than a dozen APHA policy statements related to nuclear weapons, peace, and social justice. For his overall contributions, the APHA awarded Dr. Gould the prestigious Sidel-Levy Peace Award in 2009. Dr. Gould has authored numerous book chapters on the health impacts of nuclear weapons including War and Public Health, and Terrorism and Public Health (Oxford University Press).

Dr. Gould has given hundreds of presentations over the past 35 years on a wide range of health and environmental issues in local, national and international meetings. Dr. Gould has published over 20 peer-reviewed and other articles and book chapters related to the social, physical and chemical environmental agents that impact health.

For over 25 years Dr. Gould has been an active member of the Environmental Health Committee of the Santa Clara County Medical Association (SCCMA) chapter of the California Medical Association (CMA), and through this work has authored numerous resolutions adopted by CMA as policy. In 2012 he received the Santa Clara County Medical Association’s "Outstanding Contribution to the Medical Association" award for his efforts on climate change and environmental health. 
 

6:00 PM - Welcome and Introduction Dr. Russell
6:05 PM - Dr. Gould- Health and Environmental Impacts of Nuclear Weapons and War
6:50 PM – Q and A - Dr. Russell Moderator
7:00 - End
 

Register for the next Environmental Health Committee Webinar, "Obesogen: Unmasking the Metabolical Obesity Crisis," on Tuesday, April 14. Register by clicking HERE.