Redefining Deprivation in a Conflict Area: Learning from the Palestinian Experience

This event will be the launch of the publication 'Redefining deprivation in a conflict area: learning from the Palestinian experience using mixed methods' produced as part of the Academic Collaboration with Arab Universities Programme, led by Principal Investigators Tiziana Leone, Rita Giacaman and Weeam Hammoudeh. To read the report, click here.

Conflicts threaten public health, human security, and wellbeing. While their visible impacts garner considerable attention (such as physical disability, injury, and death), they affect populations in other important ways. This paper reviews findings from a two-year collaboration project to understand how people make sense of, and cope with, various forms of deprivation and trauma resulting from experiences of conflict and military occupation in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt). Using mixed methods, the paper explores mental health and wellbeing outcomes associated with deprivation in a conflict setting. 

Weeam Hammoudeh is currently an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University and formerly ACSS (Arab Council for the Social Sciences) Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Researcher at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Birzeit University. She is interested in understanding how political and social transformations impact health, psychosocial wellbeing, and population processes, particularly in conflict areas; as well as how health systems and social institutions develop and shift in relation to political, economic, and structural factors, particularly in developing countries and post-colonial settings.

Tracy Kuo Lin is an Assistant Professor of Health Economics at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research examines health policy and health system resource allocation and their impact on public health and healthcare processes. She received her PhD from the University of California, Davis and held a fellowship at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her work has been published in journals such as Cancer, Journal of Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy, Globalization and Health, and Implementation Science Communication. She is a researcher on the project 'Re-Conceptualising Health in Wars and Conflicts: A New Focus on Deprivation and Suffering'.

Suzan Mitwalli is an academic researcher at the Institute of Community and Public Health - Birzeit University, and assistant coordinator of the Masters in Public Health program. Her main research interest is mental health, and she has worked for many years on intervention research with the Community Based Rehabilitation organization (CBR). She has also been involved in several research projects at the Institute relating to women’s health, population health, child health, and occupational health using quantitative and qualitative research methods.  

Tiziana Leone is an Associate Professor at the London School of Economics. Tiziana’s research agenda is focused around maternal and reproductive health, including a lifecourse approach to women’s health. She is currently analysing secondary data on the linkages that menarche, menopause and mid-life age have on fertility outcomes and health in later life. She has collaborated in expert roles with international organisations (eg: WHO, UNFPA and UNICEF) in tracking the progress of the MDGs and SDGs in LMICs in maternal and child health.

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