Hussam Jefee-Bahloul

Hussam Jefee-Bahloul, M.D., is a Syrian psychiatrist based in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was born and raised in Syria and moved to the US to pursue training in psychiatry in 2009. While the focus of his clinical career is in addiction psychiatry, he has been involved in projects pertaining to global mental health, refugee mental health and cross-cultural psychiatry. He has a special interest in the role of technology and its implementation (telemental health) in conflict and disaster settings. He is the lead author of Telemental Health in Resource-Limited Global Settings, an edited book published by Oxford University Press in May 2017. In his work with the Syrian refugee crisis, he published extensively on mental health issues of Syrian refugees and co-founded the Syrian Telemental Health Network which assists in capacity-building training and consultations to field medical and mental health workers in the Syrian crisis. Via an internet-based platform, Collegium Telemedicus, the network connects multiple clinics inside and outside the war-zone of Syria and neighboring countries with mental health specialists around the world. He is also a published poet and translator with two books of poetry published in Arabic, and an upcoming book of poetry-in-translation that will be published in the US by Cervena Barva Press in 2018. Dr. Jefee-Bahloul’s work in the Syrian Telemental Health Network and his poetry were featured on National Public Radio in March 2017.