Bahraini doctor selected to WHO panel

Manama : Dr Randa Hamada of the Arabian Gulf Arabian University (AGU) has been elected member of the Eastern Mediterranean Advisory Committee on Health Research by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office. 

Dr Hamada is the Vice Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at the College of Medicine and Medical Sciences, AGU. She also works as a professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. 

Dr Hamada has over 120 research papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals in several fields, notably smoking, non-communicable diseases and disease burden. She is also a member of the Global Burden of Disease Expert Team at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. She was recently appointed Commissioner of the Lancet Neurology Journal to study strokes in low and middle-income countries. Membership of the WHO Health Research Advisory Committee is an honourary appointment for outstanding individuals in the field of health research, in recognition of their contribution to this field, in order to benefit from their expertise in guiding health research in the region. 

Health Research Advisory Committee was established in 1976, to assist in the development of the regional research programme, adapted to the local needs of the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region, as part of WHO’s overall Research Programme. 

The panel also works on setting recommendations for research topics that reflect the priorities of the region, contributing to the development of health policies, and the correspondence of scientific health research agenda with strategic health goals of the region.