About LebMASH

Zavi Lakissian is the Director of LebMASH, where she leads and supports national efforts to advance sexual and reproductive health and promote equitable access to quality care for gender and sexual minorities across Lebanon and the region. With ten years of experience in LGBTQ+ and community health, she has worked with local NGOs, academic institutions, and international agencies to strengthen provider competence in gender-affirming and LGBTQ-inclusive care, challenge discriminatory practices, and expand public health education. Her work centers on community-driven advocacy, health literacy, and building sustainable systems that support the wellbeing and resilience of marginalized populations through policy engagement, training, and capacity-building programs.

She holds an MD from Yerevan State Medical University (2013), an MPH from the American University of Armenia (2014), and a PgD in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh (2016). She currently serves as the Assistant Dean for Clinical Simulation and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Balamand.

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 is an associate professor at University of Illinois Chicago College of Nursing. She has completed her BS and MS in Nursing at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, and her PhD and post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

She employs principles of community-based participatory research and qualitative methods and aims to develop evidence-based research programs and interventions to improve health outcomes among first- and second-generation Arab immigrants in the U.S., including LGBTQ Arab immigrants. She is one of the few Arab scholars to explore sexual health at the intersections of immigration, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnic identity in this population. Her program of research is grounded in social justice and health equity frameworks. Sarah is a board member of LebMASH where she has been providing trainings to healthcare students on LGBTQ health for several years.

Claude Chidiac is a Nurse Consultant and Clinical Lead for Palliative & End-of-Life Care in the NHS, London, UK. Claude has assumed a variety of academic and clinical roles in acute, hospice, and community settings in the UK and internationally. Claude’s current work focuses on improving palliative care access and provision for marginalised populations. His current research explores how the intersecting social positions of living with dementia and belonging to a gender or sexual minority 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 relating to palliative and end-of-life care. He is a former founding director of LGBTQ+ Dementia Advisory Group Community Interest Company in the UK.

Antoine Beayno, MD, joined LebMASH as a partner in 2017 and became a Board Member in April 2019. He is currently an attending psychiatrist at NYC Health + Hospitals | Harlem in New York City. He completed psychiatry residency at the American University of Beirut Medical Center in 2020, then moved to New York City where he completed training and Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He specializes in treatment of psychiatric conditions in medically complex patients, patients living with HIV and LGBTQ+ individuals. He is a member of the LGBTQ+ committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry.

Michel Sfeir earned his MSc from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and is currently pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology in Belgium. Michel Sfeir is a psycho-oncologist and psychologist. He is currently the Vice President of a Lebanese NGO called AlNajatVillage and the Workshop Director of a 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 and is currently giving trainings and supervising clinicians in NET in Germany and in Lebanon. Michel Sfeir completed several clinical training such as: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) as well as Hypnotherapy.