MEET OUR TEAM
Research Team
Sawsan Abdulrahim – Principal Investigator
Dr. Sawsan Abdulrahim is an Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Health Promotion and Community Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, at the American University of Beirut. She obtained her doctoral degree from the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Abdulrahim’s research focuses on social inequalities and health, the social and cultural meanings of subjective health evaluations, and the structural conditions that influence the wellbeing of labor migrants and refugees. Her current work focuses on the health of Syrian refugee adolescent girls in Lebanon, with an emphasis on reproductive health outcomes and early marriage. She also teaches courses in health promotion theory, forced migration and health, and global public health.
Jocelyn DeJong – Co- Principal Investigator
Dr. Jocelyn DeJong is a professor and associate dean at the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at the Faculty of Health Sciences, at the American University of Beirut. She is an expert on health and gender issues. She received her Bachelor of Arts in social anthropology from Harvard University, her Master of Philosophy from the University of Sussex in 1987, and her PhD from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 1994. Her research focuses on sexual and reproductive health in populations affected by conflict, especially Syrians, including AIDS, and its relation to population and development. She has worked on AIDS and reproductive health for the Ford Foundation in the Middle East and North Africa. In this role, she became a central actor in setting up the first task force on female genital mutilation in Egypt. She was also a program officer in reproductive health for the Ford Foundation at their regional office in Cairo, Egypt, supporting programs on reproductive health and HIV/AIDS by NGOs, governments and universities across the MENA region.
Maia Sieverding – Co- Principal Investigator
Dr. Maia Sieverding is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Health Promotion and Community Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, at the American University of Beirut. She obtained her Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the University of California Berkeley in 2012. Dr. Maia was a Social Scientist at the University of California San Francisco and a Program Officer at the Population Council office in Egypt. She is also the Coordinator of the Global Master’s Program in Health and Sustainable Development at the Faculty of Health Sciences. Dr. Sieverding is a social demographer with a focus on designing and implementing mixed methods research on a range of population and health issues in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Sub-Saharan Africa. Much of her work draws on gender and life-course theory, and she is particularly interested in the linkages between socioeconomic and health outcomes among young people. She also has a background in program evaluation, and has worked on the evaluations of health and education programs in Egypt, Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria.
Sasha Fahme – Project Coordinator
Dr. Sasha Fahme is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. She holds an M.D. from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Fahme has conducted several years of global health service and research, with prior experience in South Africa, Tanzania, and among Syrian refugees displaced in Lebanon. Her research interests are in the syndemic effects of conflict and forced displacement on gender-based violence and women’s health. Her role in Project Amenah has focused on the design and implementation of a rights-based sexual and reproductive health intervention to address sexual and reproductive health rights and disparities and mitigate drivers of early marriage among adolescent Syrian refugee girls.
Myriam Dagher – Research Assistant
Myriam Dagher is a licensed dietitian in Lebanon and has a master degree of public health nutrition from the American University of Beirut. She is passionate about creating unique and creative tools and solutions to improve the health and wellbeing of youth. Her passion started during her work experience in teaching swimming for children and young adults, where she started using children’s and parent’s own suggested strategies to design and adopt professionally and fun designed lesson plans. Then, during her work journey in the public health nutrition field, Myriam has started to note the critical need to explore the perceptions and experiences of youth and their caregivers towards health behaviors and to gather their practical suggestions to improve existing programs and develop needed and attractive interventions to promote health and wellbeing. Myriam’s role in Amenah include overseeing diverse aspects of the study implementation, supervising the implementation of field activities, managing the collection and analysis of mixed-methods process evaluation data, and undertaking various project coordination activities.
Dima Bteddini – Senior Research Assistant
Dima Bteddini (MS), a senior research assistant in the Department of Health Promotion and Community Health in the Faculty of Health Sciences (AUB). She has overseen the process of recruitment and training of community workers for Amenah I. She has also been involved in data collection through consenting and surveying girls, and in process evaluation through observing selected mothers’ and girls’ sessions. Dima has been also involved in developing the content of the girls’ program, and training of community workers on facilitation of these sessions. She has also participated in meetings with various stakeholders, as school administrators, mayor and other community members.
Lama El Ayoubi – Research Assistant
Lama El Ayoubi (M.Sc., MPH) is a research assistant on the Amenah project since June 2018. As part of her work in the formative phase of Amenah II, Lama conducted a qualitative research study with adolescent unmarried and married Syrian refugee girls to learn about their access to SRH information and their experiences with menarche, sex and marriage, contraception, and pregnancy. She has also been working with the evaluation technical advisor on designing evaluation tools for the study, training data collectors, and monitoring the quality of the collected data.
Lina Khayat – Administrative Assistant
Lina Khayat, a graduate from the Lebanese American University in business management, worked on the Amenah Project as an Administrative Assistant. Lina provided general administrative support including but not limited to preparation of memos, communication with team members, scheduled meetings and assisted in organizing scheduled trainings. She also handled all logistics related to the project and contributed in collecting data from Amenah’s project beneficiaries. In addition, Lina supported the operations team when needed.
Implementation Team
Aya Ahmad
Community Research Assistant
Aya Ahmad is the community-based research assistant in Amenah Project. She resides in Bekaa, Lebanon where the project is taking place. She has received a degree in law. Aya works in the Bekaa region to conduct data collection and share her insights on the research process and emerging research outputs. Aya is also greatly skilled in working closely with the community workers and monitoring and mentoring their activities.
Community Workers
The implementation of Amenah I was carried out by a dedicated team of 14 female Syrian community workers, who conducted household surveys with the families of our participants, facilitated the Amenah sessions with the girls as well as the mothers, and conducted family visits on a monthly basis. Our community workers were recruited and selected from a pool of educated Syrian women located in the Bekaa area, with a demonstrated experience and/or interest in working on an early marriage project. The community workers were given several trainings to learn about various issues ranging from their roles within the intervention and the different topics covered by the Amenah sessions, to more critical structural issues such as patriarchy and implicit bias disadvantage girls and women. Additionally, they were given continuous training throughout the project, where they provided feedback on the last sessions they delivered and received a refresher on the content and delivery of the upcoming sessions. The success of the pilot phase can largely be attributed to the commitment of our community workers, who we intend to engage and further build their capacities during Phase II of Amenah.
Peer Educators
In preparation for the implementation of Amenah II, we have recruited university-level female peer educators aged between 18 and 24. These peer educators will conduct the intervention with the adolescent girls and maintain a mentor-mentee relationships with them. The peer educators have received an extensive training on group process, gender empowerment, facilitation skills with adolescents, and sexual and reproductive health, to prepare them to deliver the Amenah II sessions. They will deliver the intervention through structured sessions to all intervention and comparison group adolescents. They will additionally engage in community outreach to intervention group adolescents. Community workers will work closely with the peer educators and provide them with support in preparing for and delivering the girls’ sessions.