Addressing the health impacts of climate change in the MENA region
September/October 2023 | Volume 22 Number 5
Photo courtesy of Wael Al-DelaimyWael Al-Delaimy (right) and Fayez Abdullah (left), co-directors of the GEOHealth Hub MENA, met with Mohamed Khashashna (center), Jordanian secretary general of the Ministry of Environment, to advance climate-related policies in the country.
The Fogarty-funded GEOHealth Hub for Climate Change and Health in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) recently held meetings with several public health and environmental leaders from Lebanon and Jordan to discuss the health impacts of climate change in the region. One meeting resulted in a collaboration between the Hub and the University of Balamand, Lebanon, to ensure accurate data collection on health outcomes relevant to climate and air pollution. This will help improve access to this data and support evidence-based policies on issues like air pollution and its impact on climate change and health.
Dr. Wael Al-Delaimy, co-director of the GEOHealth Hub MENA at the University of California San Diego, recently met with Lebanon’s ministers of health and environment, Dr. Firas Abiad and Mr. Nasser Yassine, and a delegation from the University of Balamand, Lebanon, which included Dr. Myriam Mrad, GEOHealth Hub country principal investigator for Lebanon and director of public health at the University of Balamand, and Dr. Youssef Bassim, the university’s chief operation officer.
Al-Delaimy is a multidisciplinary epidemiologist whose research focuses on the health of local and global vulnerable populations, with special interest in climate-related health policy. He along with Dr. Fayez Abdullah, co-director of the hub in Jordan, met with Dr. Mohamed Khashashna, Jordanian secretary general of the Ministry of Environment to discuss ways to advance national climate-related policies. Part of Fogarty’s larger GEOHealth program, the GEOHealth Hub for Climate Change and Health in MENA-Jordan was launched in 2022 as a collaboration between the Jordan University for Science and Technology, the University of Balamand, Mohamed VI University of Health Sciences, the University of California San Diego, the University of California Berkeley, and Harvard University with the goal of studying different health-related threats related to climate change in the MENA region.
Fogarty’s Global Environmental and Occupational Health (GEOHealth) program, supported by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute on Aging, and the NIH Office of Women’s Health Research, supports as a series of regional hubs for collaborative research, data management, research training, curriculum and outreach material development, and policy support to address high-priority local, national, and regional environmental and occupational health threats in low- and middle-income countries.
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Updated October 17, 2023
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