Haleama Al Sabbah is an associate professor and the former chair of the health sciences department at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. She completed her PhD in public health nutrition in 2008 at the faculty of medicine of Ghent University in Belgium. Her doctoral research contributed to a national study of health behaviours in Palestinian school-aged children as part of a World Health Organisation initiative. She was also a Fulbright senior visiting scholar and did postdoctoral studies in public health and nutrition at the Jean Mayer Human Nutrition Center on Aging of Tufts University in Boston. She has served as the director of the public health department and co-ordinator of the master’s programme in public health in the faculty of medicine at An-Najah National University in Palestine.

Dr Al Sabbah has taught various undergraduate and graduate courses in public health and nutrition and supervised numerous master’s and Ph.D. theses. Her research encompasses obesity, diabetes, maternal and child health, non-communicable diseases, nutrition epidemiology, refugee health, and other research related to public health nutrition with over 62 peer-reviewed publications. An active mentor and international keynote speaker, Dr. Al Sabbah has contributed to strategic health initiatives and served as a consultant for organizations such as UNICEF, WHO, and MOHAP. 

Her first degree was in public health nutrition, at the Jordan University of Science and Technology, after which she worked as a nutritionist in hospitals in Amman and then at Amman University. From 1995 to 1998 she worked at the Red Crescent Society Maternity Hospital in Ramallah, Palestine. In 1997 she was awarded a scholarship for postgraduate master’s-level study in public health at the Community Health Institute of Birzeit University in Palestine. In 1998 she was awarded a scholarship for a master’s degree in international community health and nutrition at the University of Oslo, with a thesis on the self-management of diabetes in a rural Palestinian community.