Fall 2007 Vol. VI, No. 1

FHS Announces $1-million Ford Endowment

The Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) received in September 2007 a $1 million endowment from the Ford Foundation, to be matched by AUB by 2009. The endowment, which culminates in a long-time collaboration between FHS and the Foundation since 1983, will help support the Center for Research on Population and Health (CRPH) and fund graduate scholarships in public health for regional students.

"This generous endowment will ensure the sustainability of CRPH and enable it to build on past achievements in research and outreach," said Marwan Khawaja, CRPH director and professor in the Epidemiology and Population Health Department.

Since its establishment in January 2002, CRPH has been striving to be a center for regional research and outreach on population and health issues. In addition to developing the "research working group" concept that allows affiliate FHS faculty and students, with professors from other faculties at AUB and from national and regional universities to collaborate and explore exciting new areas for research and education, the Center instituted a monthly seminar series and has so far invited 50 speakers to give talks about cutting edge research on population, health and socioeconomic issues in Lebanon, the region and the world.

Among the most important CRPH sponsored research projects are ones on women's urban health, youth urban health, both funded by the Wellcome Trust, and improving Bedouin health in Jordan and Lebanon - a project funded by the European Union.

CRPH has also sponsored several seminars and training workshops such as the first annual regional workshop on Urbanization, Poverty, and Health from May 17-18, held with support from the Wellcome Trust. The workshop sought to advance the regional knowledge base and to offer an "academic" space for sharing experiences between the region's researchers working in the field of urban health and urban poverty. CRPH successfully runs a visiting fellows program, which has hosted a total of 19 researchers from the region to date, thus further strengthening research capacity and regional collaboration.

Since 2001, FHS has raised funds to support regional students in order to contribute to training public health professionals from the region. So far, FHS has supported 23 students from Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Tunis, and Yemen and has also offered 9 scholarships to Lebanese physicians to specialize in public health. Almost all regional students have returned to their countries upon graduation and are occupying important public health positions. "The Ford Endowment will also allow FHS to continue its support of regional graduate public health scholarship," said Dean Zurayk.

One of the program's successful graduates is Yara Jarallah who graduated with an MS in Population Health from AUB in 2005 upon receiving a grant from the Arab Fund, and joined the CRPH as a visiting fellow from April until July 2007. Jarallah's experience at FHS triggered her successful career and research.

"My graduate studies at FHS had a major influence on my career path and has helped

me a lot in pursuing my passion in the field of population health as it pertains to sexual and reproductive health, migration, gender, and human rights… for example, following my graduation from FHS, I was granted a fellowship with the United National Population Fund both in the headquarters in New York and the country office in Palestine to work on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, HIV/AIDS prevention, and gender and Population issues with particular relevance to young people. While in New York I was introduced to the Youth Coalition - an international organization of young people between the ages of 15-29 years committed to promoting adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health and rights at the national, regional and international levels," says Jarallah. She is currently conducting research at the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University on the field of quality of life from a health economics perspective population health.

For more information about the CRPH, please visit: http://staff.aub.edu.lb/~webcrph/index.htm

For more information on regional scholarships, please visit: http://fhs.aub.edu.lb/admissions/graduate-scholarships.html