IDRC grantee Niveen Abu-Rmeileh elected president of the Global Implementation Society

GIS was established to promote collaborative approaches to implementation practice, science and policy. Working across disciplines, GIS supports effective implementation and scaling practices to improve outcomes for children, families, individuals and communities worldwide.

IDRC-funded work

Abu-Rmeileh, who holds a doctoral degree in statistical epidemiology, is a longstanding research partner for IDRC, starting in 2019 with a project to strengthen adolescent reproductive health information systems in the West Bank. Since then, she has worked on other projects at the intersection of women’s health, digital health and data governance, examining antibiotic resistance genes in wastewater, as well as the intersection of mental health and sexual and reproductive health. Most recently, she was as an awardee of a grant focused on the use of artificial intelligence to scale the use of modern family planning methods among postpartum women in the West Bank.

Her research

A full professor of epidemiology and public health at Birzeit University, Abu-Rmeileh’s research interests are focused on three broad areas: sexual and reproductive health, non-communicable diseases (issues such as diabetes, cancer and tobacco smoking) and strengthening health information systems. Implementation science and research permeate all of these areas of work. She is a member of the Lancet Commission on Evidence-Based Implementation.

Her impact

For more than 20 years, Abu-Rmeileh has been working with local communities, policymakers, networks of researchers and the next generation of scholars in the West Bank to strengthen health systems through rigorous research that is grounded in community-led efforts and policy-relevant outcomes. She serves as an advisory member at the Eastern Mediterranean World Health Organization regional office in health research and research ethics, providing valuable insights and guidance regarding research ethics and best practices and contributing to the advancement of health research in the region. Abu-Rmeileh is among the many researchers across the West Bank who serve as leaders in public health, implementation research and localized approaches to better health and wellbeing for populations experiencing multiple forms of vulnerability and exclusion.