From WHO to BGU

Prof. Dorit Nitzan has come full circle: As a child, she lived for a time with her parents in Beer Sheva, and she returned to the city in 2022 as a member of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Trained as a pediatrician, Prof. Nitzan spent close to two decades in leadership positions in the World Health Organization (WHO), focusing on food security, emergency response and disaster management. In her current position, she is director of the emergency medicine master’s program at the School of Public Health and heads the BGU-FOR (Food Systems, One Health and Resilience) Initiative.

After graduating from the Tel Aviv University School of Medicine and completing her internship, Nitzan went to the United States to continue her training. She completed a specialization in gastroenterology and pediatric nutrition at Columbia University Children's Hospital in New York, where she also earned an MPH (master’s degree in public health).

This was followed by close to a decade in the Israeli Ministry of Health, where she was head of Food and Nutrition Services. From there, she joined the World Health Organization and filled a variety of positions in Europe, including posts in Serbia and Ukraine. In her most senior role at the WHO, Nitzan headed the organization's emergency response services for the European region, with responsibility for 53 different countries, including Israel, and lived in Copenhagen for six years. She counts managing humanitarian aid to residents of war-torn Ukraine as one of her most complex and challenging assignments.

Throughout her career, Prof. Nitzan combined hands-on work on the ground with research and teaching. "I've always been especially interested in cross-disciplinary research on preparedness and emergency response," she says.

"This translates into ensuring that life-saving health services are accessible to everyone; to providing tailored medical responses to distinct, vulnerable populations, to training staff in providing humanitarian aid, to developing research aimed at protecting, maintaining and promoting the balance associated with 'One Health' – human health, animal and plant health, and environmental health - and to developing food and food security systems that generate resilience."

In recent years, Prof. Nitzan has become a staunch proponent of the ‘One Health’ holistic approach which recognizes that the health of people, animals, plants, and their shared environment are all mutually dependent. To this approach she adds an emphasis on the importance of robust food systems and resilience, thus laying the foundation of the Food Systems, One Health, and Resilience (FOR) approach. The BGU-FOR initiative at the University, led by Nitzan, is focused on just that, researching and spreading the word through collaborative, multisectoral, transdisciplinary, system-focused research and action.

Considering these interests, it is not surprising that Nitzan chose to join the Faculty of Health Sciences at BGU for this new stage in her career.  She explains, "Ben-Gurion University's reputation reaches far and wide: the students are at the center and studies and research are at its core. These impressive academic achievements combine with community involvement, caring, and action whose goal is to leave no one behind.”

To read more about Prof. Nitzan’s fascinating career.

Adapted from issue 136 of Aleph-Bet-Gimmel, the University’s Hebrew language magazine. For the original article.