Conflict, Displacement, and Health: Perspectives from Palestine and Lebanon

Eveline Hitti, MD, MBA, is a professor of clinical emergency medicine at AUB. She graduated with an MD degree from John Hopkins School of Medicine in 2002, where she also completed her residency training in EM. After spending four years at Medstar Health and completing her MBA at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, Dr. Hitti joined AUB in 2009. She is currently Chairperson of the Department of Emergency Medicine at AUBMC. During her tenure at AUB, Dr. Hitti led the building up of the Department of Emergency Medicine, taking it from its infancy phase to a full-fledged academic department with an ACGME-I accredited residency program, an EM student clerkship, expanded clinical services and scholarly output. Dr. Hitti has received multiple awards in recognition of her work advancing EM internationally including the Cristina Costin International Leadership Award and the Samuel Asper Medical Education Award. Dr. Hitti's scholarly work has focused on applying and developing evidence-based health management practices to improve quality and safety of patient care. In addition, Dr. Hitti's research focuses on emergency preparedness, acute care and management practices in the low resource setting.

Thaer Ahmad, MD, is a board-certified emergency medicine physician who has provided medical relief in some of the world's most devastated conflict zones, including Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Kenya. Dr. Ahmad has since been denied entry into Gaza by Israeli authorities on four separate occasions, citing his Palestinian heritage and advocacy work in the United States and before the EU and UN. Dr. Ahmad is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He serves on the board of the Palestinian American Medical Association, a humanitarian NGO dedicated to building healthcare capacity in underserved communities, and is a past board member of MedGlobal. He also serves on the advisory board of the Borgen Project.

Alaa Ousta, MD, is a dual-trained, board certified Emergency Physician and board-eligible Critical Care physician. She will be starting her faculty position as an Assistant Professor at Emory University. She just completed her fellowship training in Critical Care Anesthesiology at the University of Cincinnati. Before that, she completed Emergency Medicine residency and served as Chief Resident at Duke University, where she also completed the Medical Education Leadership Track. Dr. Ousta previously completed an NIH T32 research fellowship at the University of Chicago studying post-cardiac arrest brain injury and neuroinflammation. Her academic interests include resuscitation science, ECMO and mechanical circulatory support, post-cardiac arrest care, Global Health, and medical education development.