Cindy Sousa, Assistant Professor at the GSSWSR, attended the Ninth Annual Lancet Palestinian Health Alliance Conference in Beirut, Lebanon where she presented a paper entitled "Addressing the social determinants of health through public health policy".
Cindy's research focuses on political violence, trauma, health, and resilience, particularly within families and communities. This Lancet-sponsored conference focused on the Health of Palestinians Inside and Outside the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It is jointly sponsored by The Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University, the Faculty of Health Sciences at the American University of Beirut, and the Lancet Palestinian Health Alliance (LPHA).
Leading up to the conference, Cindy spent time in Lebanon exploring the history of and recovery from the 15 year civil war there, which ended in 1990. She also met with several people to examine the current situation of refugees in Lebanon, particularly the over 1 million new Syrian refugees. This work will provide some context for one of her new projects, led by a colleague at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, Bree Akesson: an exploration of parental suffering and resilience among Syrian refugee families in Lebanon. Examining the effects of the civil war in Lebanon also connects well with a new class Cindy offered this semester as a part of the GSSWSR's focus on trauma and families, which uses graphic novels to understand the trauma of and resilience within war and political violence.
For more information about the conference, please visit
https://www.birzeit.edu/en/news/ninth-annual-lancet-palestinian-health-alliance-conference. You can learn more about the refugee situation by following this link:
http://urda.org.lb/en/details.aspx?ID=1426.
