What we see here is not simply an emergency response, but the emergence of a distinct form of medicine shaped by protest itself. It challenges the long-standing assumption that healthcare can remain neutral when the state is a source of harm.
Dr Cristian Montenegro, Senior Lecturer/Reader in Critical Global Health, Dept Global Health & Social Medicine
22 July 2026
King's study finds protest medics reshaped care under state violence
Research on Chile’s 2019 uprising shows volunteer brigades developed “protest medicine”, challenging the idea that healthcare can remain neutral in political conflict.
New research from King’s College London finds that volunteer medical brigades in Chile’s 2019–2020 protests developed a new form of “protest medicine” that rejects traditional medical neutrality and instead embeds care within political resistance.
The study shows how informal healthcare groups treated thousands of injured protesters during the Estallido Social, a nationwide uprising triggered in October 2019, where more than 3,500 people were wounded and 36 killed amid clashes with police and military forces.
Drawing on 21 in-depth interviews, the research traces how care was delivered in streets, squares and improvised clinics as formal health systems were overwhelmed or distrusted.
The author, Dr Cristian Montenegro, King’s College London, examines how these brigades emerged spontaneously and evolved into coordinated networks providing first aid, trauma care and psychological support under sustained violence.
Participants describe how early expectations of protection under medical neutrality quickly collapsed. Volunteers wearing red cross symbols reported being tear-gassed, assaulted and targeted by police while treating the injured. In response, brigades developed their own safety protocols, training systems and mobile care units, often operating metres from front-line confrontations.
“Many entered the protests as citizens and became medics through necessity,” Dr Montenegro says. “Their work shows how professional ethics can be reshaped under pressure, prioritising solidarity over detachment.”
The paper introduces “protest medicine” as a concept to describe this improvised and politically engaged care. Unlike established frameworks such as mass gathering medicine or public order medicine, which treat protests primarily as logistical or security challenges, protest medicine understands injury as inseparable from political context and state violence.
The findings also reveal a shift in medical ethics. While many volunteers initially aimed to treat all injured parties impartially, including police, repeated attacks on medics led some to question whether neutrality was possible or desirable. Care increasingly focused on protecting protesters, documenting injuries and bearing witness to alleged human rights violations.
The research argues this represents a broader rethinking of medicine’s social role. Rather than operating through state institutions, protest medicine emerged as a decentralised, grassroots system grounded in trust, proximity and collective action.
The study concludes that protest medicine is not an anomaly but an under-recognised feature of contemporary uprisings worldwide, raising new questions about how healthcare operates when institutional legitimacy breaks down.
Read more: Montenegro, Cristian. 2026. “ A Different Position: Protest Medicine and the Limits of Professional Neutrality,” Sociology of Health & Illness: e70243. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.70243.
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Senior Lecturer in Critical Global Health