Health Research and Studies

Chairperson for the Specialty Committee of Health Research and Studies
Specialty Committees Members

Prof. Ziyad Mahfoud
Dr Ziyad Mahfoud is a Professor of research of Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar. Dr Mahfoud received his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Florida and since had taught at the University of Kentucky, the American University of Beirut and; for the last 12 years, at Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar. Dr Mahfoud works on designing and analyzing epidemiological and interventional studies. He is an expert in clinical trials. Dr. Mahfoud has more than 150 peer reviewed published articles with local and international collaborators and on a diverse range of topics. He has served as advisor and consultant to several pharmaceutical companies and international organizations including WHO, UNAIDS, IOM, and UNICEF. Dr Mahfoud has been doing training on Biostatistical topics, research methodology and scientific writing all over the world for a period of more than 20 years. Dr Mahfoud has won several teaching awards and recognitions for his ability to make Biostatistics easy to comprehend.

Dr. Asmae Khattabi
Asmae Khattabi, PhD-Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, Currently she is a Director of Doctoral Studies Center at the Mohammed 6 University for Health Sciences. a member on the Regional Competency Framework for the International Academy of Public Health (IAPH), a Kofi Annan Global Public Health Leadership Fellow, and a member of the TEPHINET-FETP-Accreditation Working Group.
She served, at the National School of Public Health, as a Deputy Director in charge of research, cooperation and continuing education between 2014 and 2018, as a Field Epidemiology Training Program coordinator (FETP-advanced between 2012 and 2018 and FETP frontline between 2017 and 2018).
She had several active roles in support of global health security including being a member of the Joint External Evaluation Mission in Egypt, and a facilitator of the MediPIET program. She worked with CDC-Foundation, WHO, UNFPA and GHD/EMPHNET as a consultant or an individual contractor, or a temporary adviser to provide expertise for specific tasks.
She is a Review Editor on the Editorial Board of Infectious Diseases-Surveillance, Prevention and Treatment Journal. Her research covers the application of epidemiological methods to better understanding health determinants and risk factors, and to evaluate epidemiological surveillance systems. Her scientific productivity can be described through 32 publications in peer-reviewed journals, 20 publications in national journals, 61 conference papers published in indexed journals, and contributions to the editorial board of two national journals (view her profile on Research Gate). She has been a member of the organizing and scientific committees of several national and international scientific events.

Prof. Monique Chaaya
Professor of Epidemiology in the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS), at the American University of Beirut . I graduated with a Doctorate degree of Public Health from the Department of Mental Health at Johns Hopkins School of Public Heath in 1999.
I am currently the Chairperson of the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at FHS. My main research interests focus on two priorities in public health, namely mental health broadly and dementia in specific and tobacco control.
I conducted cross sectional and longitudinal studies on mental health of vulnerable populations, specifically older adults and caregivers of dementia patients. I validated in Arabic several mental health scales, among them are the Arabic Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), the Arabic Perceived Stress Scale (A_PSS) and two dementia scales, 10/66 DRG scales and A-RUDAS (Arabic Rowland Universal Dementia Assessment Scale). I am a member of the AUB- Tobacco Control Research Group (AUB- TCRG) and member of the AUB tobacco-free taskforce responsible for evaluating tobacco-free campus implementation.
I teach basic intermediate level courses of Epidemiology and research methods for public health and medical students. I developed and coordinated the doctoral program in Epidemiology at FHS, the first PhD at FHS and the only accredited program in the region