« BackAlumni Bookshelf: Book recognized in the 2012 BMA Medical Book Awards
Six HSPH alumni are among the editors and contributors to a book that has been “Highly Commended” in the 2012 British Medical Association (BMA) Medical Book Awards. Public Health in the Arab World (Cambridge University Press, 2012), edited by Samer Jabbour, MPH ’98; Rita Giacaman, Marwan Khawaja and Iman Nuwayhid, was among 10 books receiving this recognition in the Public Health category. In addition to Jabbour, Afamia Kaddour, MPH ‘10; Nabil Kronfol, DPH ‘79; Natalia Linos, SD ‘12; Hani Mowafi, MPH ‘06; and Mona Mowafi, SD ’09 (currently Research Fellow at HSPH) contributed to the volume.
Through its 520 pages and 38 chapters, the book covers a broad array of issues facing public health in the Arab region.The book has explicit attention on the social determinants of health, exploring these in two sections, but also discusses them in relation to disease entities and health of population groups in two other sections. The book also ventures into other topics that have been less examined such as health and human security, community resilience, and health and political and social reform. With contributions from 81 authors, the book is the outcome of the largest international collaboration on the subject. The book is multidisciplinary with contributions from public health academia and practice, anthropology, psychology and development studies, among others.
The BMA anonymous reviewer noted that “this is a brave effort to tackle a massive topic” using “a novel approach” making the book useful “as an introduction to public health as a discipline and not just as a review of public health within a geographical area.”
The book has been translated to Arabic by the World Health Organization Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean in Cairo, Egypt. The Arabic edition will appear later this year. The book is part of a broader initiative of the same name that the Faculty of Health Sciences at the American University of Beirut is launching and which aims at “mobilizing for a new public health” in the region.
Disclaimer: Royalties from the sale of the book will go towards purchasing copies to be distributed for free to students and institutions of public health in the Arab world.