Dr Sharif Ismail
MBBS MPH MFPH PhD
Research Fellow
LSHTM
15-17 Tavistock Place
London
WC1H 9SH
United Kingdom
I am a Clinical Research Fellow at the School, and a Specialist Registrar in public health medicine in London. I divide my time between service public health work in the NHS, and academic and teaching commitments at the School. Previously, I worked as a Health Adviser at the then UK Department for International Development (DFID) from 2018-19, and with the National Infection Service at Public Health England (PHE) on the UK COVID-19 response in 2020-21.
Before qualifying in medicine, I worked in policy analysis for RAND Europe, the Institute for Government, and the Nuffield Trust.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
I help to deliver the Issues in Public Health and Principles and Practice of Public Health modules as part of the MSc in Public Health at the School, and also contribute to the distance learning MSc modules, Control of Infectious Diseases (IDM104) and Health Systems (GHM201).
Research
My work spans communicable disease epidemiology, health services research, and health policy and systems research. I use mixed-methods approaches drawing mainly on systems thinking.
Currently I have two main areas of research interest:
1. Improving understanding of health system resilience and responses to shocks (humanitarian, conflict-related, climatic etc) - including how we think about these concepts, ways in which resilience can be assessed and/or measured, and approaches to strengthening it; and
2. Systems approaches to optimising the delivery, and uptake of, vaccination across populations.
My PhD, which was funded by the Wellcome Trust, looked at health system resilience to compound shocks in Lebanon, through an analysis of childhood vaccination delivery using System Dynamics Modelling (SDM). Most of my work is focused on the Middle East (specifically Lebanon, Syria and Egypt), although I have recently been involved in projects on various aspects of SARS-CoV-2 prevention and control in the UK.