Health and Well-Being

1-Exploring strategies for capacity building and community based education to impede the rise of chronic diseases in the MENA region.  The WHO projects that the MENA region will hold the largest increase in deaths from chronic diseases (Diabetes, Cardiovascular, Stroke, Cancer). As such there is an urgent need for capacity development to shape feasible community based intervention initiatives that aim to reduce behavioral and social risk factors (Smoking, Sedentary lifestyle, Unhealthy diet). 

 

 

2-Towards building National Health Information systems: Overcoming Social/Cultural/Governmental barriers to build a framework for Epidiomological Surveillance (ES). ES is the ongoing and comprehensive collection, analysis and interpretation of health care related data which is needed to plan, implement and evaluate health care systems. Epidemiological data on various diseases in the MENA region is undeniably lacking. 

 

 

3-Persuading the adolescent: from risk to resilience. Exploring school/community/government based strategies for building resilience in Arab youth. Focus on smoking, physical activity, sexual-education, health diet.

 

4-Bio-medical and clinical research: Exploring the scarcity and novel research. Several Gulf states have pooled large amounts of money to build state-of-the-art research facilities. However, research output is exceptionally lagging with respect to Asian and European countries, as the prevailing mentality continues to be that of buying science and technology rather than producing it. 

 

 

5-Exploring two-tiered health care systems:  The public and private sectors. As a result of socioeconomic disparities, access to comprehensive health coverage in the MENA region is quite limited and is usually distributed towards urbanized areas and families of higher socioeconomic status.