Dr Hanan Abukmail is a Research Fellow working at the intersection of health systems research, humanitarian response, and population health modelling in conflict-affected settings. She is a medical doctor from Gaza City, occupied Palestine, whose early clinical experience in a health system repeatedly disrupted by war shaped her commitment to improving healthcare delivery and outcomes at the population level.

At the LSHTM, Dr Abukmail worked on the Gaza Health Impact Project, a joint initiative with Johns Hopkins University funded by the UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub. The project developed scenario-based projections of excess mortality across disease areas and the burden of mental health conditions in the Gaza Strip to inform humanitarian planning and policy in protracted crises. Building on this work, she is currently contributing to the JI-RISE (Joint Intelligence for Real-time Support for Emergencies) initiative, which extends the original modelling framework into a real-time humanitarian intelligence platform. JI-RISE integrates enhanced mortality estimation, epidemic and vaccine-preventable disease modelling, and early warning systems to support operational decision-making for humanitarian partners including Médecins Sans Frontières and UN agencies, while informing global guidance frameworks.

Prior to her work in the UK, Dr Abukmail collaborated with several health organisations in Gaza on initiatives focused on health systems strengthening, patient safety, and quality of care. During periods of acute crisis, including armed conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic, she coordinated mobile medical teams delivering outreach services to older adults and hard-to-reach communities. She has contributed to national research on cancer awareness among Palestinians and is a published researcher, with recent work appearing in The Lancet, and served as a reviewer for Global Health Promotion journal. She has presented her research at international conferences in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and was invited to speak at the Centre for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Dr Abukmail holds an MPhil in Population Health Sciences from the University of Cambridge and is currently undertaking a PhD at Cambridge, focusing on maternal health interventions and healthcare delivery models in resource-constrained settings.