AUB and Oxford Launch EU-funded Bedouin Health Project

Dean Zurayk (center) at the study session

The Faculty of Health Sciences at AUB in collaboration with Oxford University launched a three-year project on Bedouin reproductive and child health. The aim is to assess the accessibility and quality of healthcare services for this social group.

Led by Oxford University's Dawn Chatty, the deputy director of the Refugee Studies Center, in partnership with Marwan Khawaja, the director of the Center for Research on Population and Health at AUB, the European Union-funded Bedouin Health Project will focus on the 30,000 Bedouins of the Beqa'a region. Along with a team of researchers, they will conduct in-depth interviews with community members and policy makers to assess the quality and accessibility of the six health clinics and centers that are available to Bedouins. While the AUB-Oxford project will focus on Lebanon, another project will also study Bedouins in Jordan, thus offering opportunities for comparison.

The current study, which was announced on September 10, will include two phases, explained Faysal al-Kak, project coordinator and a Health Sciences lecturer. An assessment and data collection phase, which will seek to determine what kind of health services are provided to the Bedouin, is expected to be completed by the end of 2008. A subsequent intervention phase, in which measures and actions that can improve conditions for Bedouins, is scheduled for implementation in 2009.

Chatty, who did her PhD dissertation on Bedouins in the 1970s and has been studying this social group in the region for over thirty years, said the study was a long time coming. "There is a real need to improve services for Bedouins," she said, adding that the lessons learned from the Bedouin project could potentially be extrapolated to the national healthcare system, thus helping policy makers make effective interventions.

Health Sciences Dean Huda Zurayk praised the team for choosing to study Bedouins, since they are a marginalized and rural group. "This project falls within our vision of getting involved in practical, intervention-based projects that make an impact," she said. The project will also give AUB students the opportunity to become exposed to a wider variety of health problems in Lebanon.