Personal Info
- Country of residence: United States
Information
Rita Jacman (1950-) is a Palestinian physician born in Bethlehem, who worked as a teaching and research assistant at the San Francisco Medical Center at the University of California, from 1973 to 1977. She graduated from that university with a doctorate in pharmacy with a specialization in clinical pharmacy in 1977. She continued her studies and obtained a Master's degree in Sociology-Social Policy with a focus on health and women from the University of Essex, Colchester, UK in 1985.
Jaccumman received an honorary doctorate from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2011 for making "an outstanding contribution to increasing understanding or appreciation of the causes of things." She was also awarded the title of International Fellow of the Society for Adolescent Research in 2018 for her "internationally and culturally sensitive approach to understanding adolescence worldwide," and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from King's College London for her work that "set the standard for health care delivery" in war and post-war contexts. War in the Middle East and the world. She is one of three coordinators and a member of the steering group of the Palestinian Health Alliance in The Lancet. She also currently serves as Commissioner for the Lancet Commission on Syria and the Lancet Commission on Human Rights and Health.
Her life
Rita worked as a physician and teacher at the Presbyterian Hospital Medical Center of the Christian Church in San Francisco from 1977-1978. She then returned to the West Bank and became an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Birzeit University from 1978 to 1984. She was a founding member and research coordinator of the Department of Community Health at Birzeit University from 1985-1987, and its director since 1988.
Since 1993 she has been a founding member and lecturer in the Women's Studies Program at Birzeit University and a member of the Steering Committee of the UK-based Global University Services for Palestinian Women. Member of the Committee for the Advancement of Women in Palestinian Society of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). It also conducted a variety of feasibility studies and evaluations of health and social development projects in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Egypt and Yemen.
Rita collaborated closely with the Palestinian social work movement in the eighties, which led to the development of the Palestinian primary health care model and the establishment of the first women's health program. In the nineties, she also participated in building the Palestinian community rehabilitation network for the disabled. It chronicled the effects of the Israeli military occupation on the physical and mental health of Palestinians. Since 2000, it has focused on the impact of chronic war-like conditions and exposure to political violence on the health and well-being of Palestinians.
She has written extensively on interdisciplinary public health issues and co-authored several books both locally and globally including, Mental Psychosocial Health Care in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in War and Conflict: The Fetal System (Institute of Community and Public Health in collaboration with the Center for Continuing Education at Birzeit University, 2004). She also co-edited a book titled Public Health in the Arab World in 2012, published by Cambridge University Press.
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