Research Profile - College of Medicine and Health Science - United ...

Department of Community Medicine
of school related traffic injury, home injury, road
crashes and use of safety belts, and drowning.
Occupational Health Research: The Department
has a 1 million USD grant to carry out a 600-
household field epidemiology survey on
Environment and Health. This is being done
jointly with collaborators from the Gillings School
of Public Health at North Carolina University,
Chapel Hill (UNC). The source of funding is the
Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi (EAD). The
field study is part of a larger project involving
UNC, RAND Corporation, and our department as
research partners.
The Health Authority of Abu Dhabi (HAAD) has
also awarded a research grant to our department
for developing guidelines on preventing heat
stress. This is an occupational and environmental
health issue particularly relevant to the desert
climate in the UAE and the surrounding region.
Biostatistics: Our team of statisticians /
epidemiologists provides advice on study design
and statistical analyses to researchers at the
Faculty of Medicine and to external
organizations including government
departments and industry.
Research Interests
Dr. Fatma Al Maskari: Public health physician
and epidemiologist with interest in noncommunicable
chronic diseases epidemiology
and prevention, lifestyle and health and
evidence-based medicine. She is currently
involved in research aiming to determine
prevalence of DM complications among patients
in Al-Ain. Recently received the best Oral
Presentation Award at the First International
Conference for the Study of Diabetes, held in
Dubai during February 2005.
Prof. Tar-Ching Aw: US-Board certified in
occupational medicine. He has a special interest
in occupational toxicology, occupational risks to
health-care workers, and training and education.
Prof. Aw is a member of the International
Advisory Board of Occupational Medicine.
Dr. Roos Bernsen: Epidemiologist and
Biostatistician with special interest in allergy
and asthma. She provided consultations to the
Research Department of the Erasmus Medical
Center of the University of Rotterdam in the
Netherlands for many years before joining FMHS,
and conducted studies in the Netherlands on
risk factors for childhood asthma and allergy. She
is organizing related studies in the UAE.
Dr. Iain Blair: Public health specialist physician
with a background in UK health protection. He
has published articles on the surveillance and
control of infectious diseases and has coauthored
a textbook on health protection and
several book chapters. His current research
projects include the molecular epidemiology
of Staphylococcal aureus infection and
occupational health aspects of tuberculosis
control.
Dr. Mohamed El-Sadig: Epidemiologist and
health economist, with special interest in traffic
safety and non-communicable diseases. He is
currently coordinating a collaborative research
project with Monash University Accident
Research Center (MUARC) and co-investigating
several safety research projects in collaboration
with stakeholders in the UAE.
Dr. Michal Grivna: Public health specialist
physician with a special interest in child injury
control, school and community safety, bicyclerelated
and playground injuries and more
recently school traffic safety, trauma registration
and HIV/AIDS prevention in the UAE. A founding
member of the European Child Safety Alliance
and the Centre for Childhood Injury
Epidemiology and Prevention in the Czech
Republic. Dr. Grivna is a leading figure in the
promotion and implementation of "WHO - Safe
Community Programs".
Prof. Nico Nagelkerke: Senior Biostatistician with
a special interest in statistical methodology and
infectious disease modeling. Prof. Nagelkerke has
provided input in biostatistics to a number of
projects which resulted in peer reviewed
publications during 2008. He is collaborating with
the Department of Preventive Medicine on a study
on tuberculosis.
Dr. John Schneider: Occupational health
physician. His main research interests are
occupational rehabilitation, organization and
planning of occupational health services in rural
and remote work sites, work in hot
environments, and impairment assessment at
the workplace.
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