Rita Giacaman receives honorary doctorate from Kings College for services to Palestinian public health

King’s College London has conferred the prestigious Doctor of Science (Honrios Causa) degree on Rita Giacaman, the director of Birzeit University’s Institute of Community and Public Health, for her achievements and scholarly accomplishments in health care during war and in post-war contexts, both in the Middle East and globally.

Giacaman thanked Kings College for this prominent recognition that constitutes another accomplishment for Palestine, Birzeit University and all Palestinian academics who are fighting for their right to live in peace and to attain justice despite difficult circumstances.

Rita Giacaman is a professor of public health at Birzeit University. She is a founder and the current director of its Institute of Community and Public Health, where she has been working since 1978. In the eighties, she has pioneered the development of Palestinian public health and set up the Palestinian primary health care model in cooperation with the local social action movement. In the nineties, Giacaman took part in the establishment of the Palestinian community-based disability rehabilitation network.

Since the 2000’s, Giacaman’s research has focused on the effects of chronic war and continual violence on health and has carried out research on issues that include the building of psycho-social or mental health systems in war-like conditions, social epidemiology, health policy, public health, and women's health. In 2012, she co-authored a book titled “Public Health in the Arab World,” published by Cambridge University Press. Giacaman has furthermore published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals that include the Lancet, Health Policy, the European Journal of Public Health and the Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics. She received an honorary doctorate from the London School for Economics and Political Science in 2011.

King’s College is one of the UK’s leading universities with an international reputation for its research and teaching of the humanities, law, health and sciences. With a long tradition of excellence and a truly global perspective, it is dedicated to finding solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges and to developing its future leaders.