Monday, October 4, 2021 - 08:30
The Medical Laboratory Sciences (MLS) department at American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS) participated in and had a significant presence at the second annual Kurdistan Health Summit (KHS) held in Erbil October 2-4, 2021.
KHS is a conference held in Erbil annually, and serves as the largest platform in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, and Iraq for academic discussions on pressing health issues facing our country, the Middle East region, and the globe. The three-day summit this year consisted of 40 panels, covering a wide range of topics around health including, but not limited to, the role of higher education in health development, mental health, medicine control, private and public partnerships in health and more. In addition, the summit hosted over 17 hours of focused discussions regarding the most pressing issues facing Iraq and the Kurdistan region. The summit was attended by over 1,000 participants both online and in person.
Due to the importance of such an event for the health sector of the region, the MLS department sent a delegation to represent both the department and the University and take part in discussing important health and medical issues. The delegation consisted of students, staff, and faculty members led by Dr. Mohanad Nada, the chair of the MLS department at AUIS.
Students volunteered to be a part of the summit and played a significant role in clerkship of the panels. The documents they transcribed are being utilized for the development of policy papers and recommendations for stakeholders in health. The students spent four days in Erbil, received clerkship training and spent their time contributing significantly to the summit. “They truly represented the University and themselves with grace, and should be a source of pride for the AUIS community. Their attendance acted as a supplement to their learning of public health,” said Dr. Nada.
The students were supervised by Ms. Goshan Karadaghi, a lecturer in the MLS department at AUIS. Ms. Karadaghi has been a member of the scientific board of the Kurdistan Health Summit since January 2021, and played a significant role in planning, organizing and implementing the summit in partnership with the remainder of the board. Ms. Karadaghi chaired one panel titled, “Recognizing the Role of Research for Evidence-Based Health Management” and participated as a panellist in a panel titled “Role of Higher Education in Building Healthcare Leaders: the Shortage of Healthcare System Programs.”
In addition to the summit’s activities, our AUIS delegation, represented by Dr. Nada, met with the KHS scientific board to discuss possible collaboration and a partnership regarding public health promotion and research in the future.