Zavi Lakissian, MD, MPH, Director
Executive Board
Dr. Lakissian is the simulation program and research coordinator at AUBMC. Dr. Lakissian earned her medical degree from Yerevan State Medical University, Yerevan, Armenia in 2013. In parallel, during her last two years of medical school, she completed her graduate studies in public health at the American University of Armenia (AUA), and then in social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Dr. Lakissian completed a post- doctoral research fellowship in the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the AUBMC.
Omar Fattal, MD, MPH
Executive Board
Omar Fattal is a founder, past president and current board member of the Lebanese Medical Association for Sexual Health (LebMASH) as well as a founder and current board member of Friends of LebMASH. He is currently a member of the editorial board of the LGBT Health journal. He is a former fundraising officer and a member of Helem, a Lebanese LGBT rights organization.
Omar Fattal is currently the Deputy Chief Medical Officer and System Chief of Behavioral Health at NYC Health + Hospitals and a psychiatrist with the Pride Clinic at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He is also a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He is a 1999 graduate of the American University of Beirut (AUB) Medical School. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Public Health from AUB. He completed his residency in Psychiatry at the Cleveland Clinic in 2005.
Sarah Abboud, RN, PhD
Executive Board
Dr. Abboud (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Nursing and has been a board member of LebMASH since 2016. Dr. Abboud completed her BS and MS in Nursing at the American University of Beirut School of Nursing, Lebanon, and her PhD and post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. She completed a Visiting Faculty Fellowship at Yale University School of Public Health Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (2017-2019).
Her program of research is grounded in social justice and health equity frameworks and has two interrelated tracks: first, sexual health promotion and sexual violence prevention among Arab immigrants in the US; and second, sexual and mental health promotion among Arab LGBTQ people in the US and Lebanon. Alongside her research, her advocacy work centers on the (in)visibility of Arab/Middle Eastern & North African (MENA) identity and calls for a separate racial/ethnic MENA identity category on the US census.
Claude Chidiac, RN, MSc, FHEA
Executive Board
Claude is a Nurse Consultant in Palliative Care, and Clinical Lead for Palliative and End-of-Life Care at
Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. Claude has assumed a variety of academic and clinical
roles in acute, hospice, and community settings in the UK and globally. Claude’s current work
focuses on improving palliative care response for marginalised populations. His PhD research
explores how the intersecting social positions of living with dementia and belonging to a gender or
sexual minoritised group may impact on the needs and preferences about the end of life. Claude has
been involved in a number of national and international consultations on palliative care programme
development, and promoting equity in palliative care for certain minoritised groups. He sits on the
Board of Directors of the LGBTQ+ Dementia Advisory Group CIC.
Antoine Beayno, MD
Executive Board
Antoine Beayno, MD is currently a Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry fellow at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He completed his Psychiatry residency at the American University of Beirut. He has joined LebMASH as a partner in 2018 and became a Board member in April 2019. His interests in the field of Psychiatry are LGBT Mental Health, Transgender Medicine and people living with HIV. He has given multiple trainings and workshops to mental health providers in Lebanon and the region about LGBT-affirmative care.
Michel Sfeir, MSc
Executive Board
Mr. Michel Sfeir earned his MSc from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and is currently pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology in Belgium. His thesis focuses on the transmission of resilience within families.
Having completed training with the French and Francophone Society of Psycho-Oncology, Michel Sfeir is a psycho-oncologist and a clinical psychologist. He is currently the mental health coordinator of a Lebanese NGO called AlNajatVillage and the workshop director of another Lebanese initiative called BeBraveBeirut.
After the Beirut blast in 2020, Michel underwent Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) training to work with people suffering from trauma and PTSD. His research areas vary from resilience, attachment, addictive disorders, sexual disorders, and mental health well-being. In addition to his research interest, Michel Sfeir completed several clinical training such as: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialecticla Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
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