Yara M. Asi, PhD

Dr. Yara M. Asi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida in the School of Global Health Management and Informatics. Her research agenda focuses on global health, human rights, and development in fragile populations. She is a Non-resident Fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, a 2020-2021 Fulbright US Scholar to the West Bank, a 2023-2024 Non-Resident Palestinian Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and the co-chair of the Palestine Health Justice Working Group in the American Public Health Association. She previously served as the Fall 2021 US Fellow at Al Shabaka Palestinian Policy Network. Along with working at one of the first accountable care organizations in the United States, she has also worked with Amnesty International USA and the Palestinian American Research Center on policy and outreach issues. She has presented at multiple national and international conferences on topics related to global health, food security, health informatics, and women in healthcare, and has published extensively on health and well-being in fragile and conflict-affected populations in journal articles and book chapters. Her work has also been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, +972 Magazine, BBC, The Conversation, Al Jazeera, The World, and other outlets. Her first book, How War Kills: The Overlooked Threats to our Health, was published in 2024 with Johns Hopkins University Press and it examines war as a public health crisis.