2015–2022 · lebanondiet.org archive

The LAND executive committee, 2015–2022

The academy’s “LAND Committee” page carried professional profiles of its executive committee. They are condensed here as a record of who led the profession in Lebanon in those years; personal and contact details are left out.

Archive page. Profiles are shortened from the academy’s own text and describe positions held at the time of publication; they are not current biographies. LAND is not connected with the current site.

Dr. Nahla Hwalla — President

Professor of Human Nutrition and Registered Dietitian with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (USA), and Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at AUB. The profile credited her with establishing dietetics as a recognised, protected profession in Lebanon through a decree prepared with the Ministry of Public Health, and with securing ACEND accreditation for AUB’s undergraduate Nutrition and Dietetics programme in November 2013 — the first nutrition programme in the Middle East to obtain it.

Her research focus was obesity from an epidemiological and clinical perspective: prevalence, dietary and socio-economic determinants, appetite hormones and links with the metabolic syndrome, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. She led the first and second national obesity studies, established research units on under-nutrition and obesity and on nutrition and non-communicable diseases with the National Council for Scientific Research, developed the Food Based Dietary Guidelines for the Lebanese population, served on the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Nutrition, directed the Lebanon WHO Collaborating Center on Nutrition, and was elected Fellow of the IUNS in 2009 and CNRS Distinguished Researcher in 2012.

Sally Sawaya — Vice President

A licensed dietitian with a BSc and MSc from AUB and a one-year internship at AUB Medical Center. She worked as a nutrition consultant and founded her own consulting practice, specialising in nutrition training and speaking about nutrition and health in weekly television and radio slots; at the time of the profile she was pursuing a PhD in Biomedical Sciences at AUB with a research interest in sports nutrition.

Two women preparing tabbouleh in a Lebanese kitchen

Sawsan Wazzan Jabri

MS in Nutrition from AUB (1981). With her husband she founded the Nutrition and Diet Center in 1990, described as the first of its kind in the Middle East, combining clinics, a production kitchen, retail and delivery, and later franchised in Saudi Arabia (1996), Kuwait (2002) and Qatar (2004). Her public work included nutrition awareness through television programmes, school programmes on student health, a radio show launched in 2010, and board roles at LAND, the AUB faculty’s advisory board and the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture of Beirut and Mount Lebanon. Awards named in the profile included AUB recognitions in 2002 and 2007, a Bahraini award for entrepreneurship in 2007 and the 2014 BLC Business of the Year Award.

Abir Barhoumi

BSc in Nutrition and Food Sciences and MSc in Food Technology from AUB; a licensed dietitian and Assistant Director of Clinical Nutrition at AUBMC, in charge of paediatric and neonatal nutrition with an emphasis on inborn errors of metabolism, involved in clinical research with the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, and an instructor in Nutrition and Dietetics at FAFS, AUB.

Dr. Maya Bassil

Assistant professor of Nutrition at the Lebanese American University, with a PhD in Human Nutrition from McGill University and a BS and MS from AUB. Her research concerned macro- and micronutrient metabolism in relation to appetite, obesity, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes; a licensed dietitian in Lebanon after an eleven-month internship at AUBMC, and a member of the American Society for Nutrition and the Canadian Society of Clinical Nutritionists.

Krystel Ouaijan

Senior instructor in the dietary department of Saint George Hospital, coordinating its ACEND-accredited dietetic internship and working as a nutrition-support dietitian in the intensive care unit; she developed clinical nutrition protocols, taught advanced clinical practice at AUB, was a member of the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism, and was pursuing a PhD in Global Health at the University of Geneva with a national study on malnutrition in Lebanese hospitals.

Why these profiles matter today

Taken together, the six profiles trace how dietetics became a regulated profession in Lebanon: a university programme with international accreditation, hospital internships, a licensing decree, national dietary guidelines and the move towards a professional order. Anyone looking for a licensed dietitian in Lebanon today will find the practical side of that history — how to check a licence and what to expect from a consultation — on the current site.

Original addresses on lebanondiet.org

The content above was published on the old site at the following addresses, which now redirect here — /About-Us/LAND-Committee.aspx — Restored from the Internet Archive on 20 September 2026; text condensed and edited for readability, facts and dates kept as published.

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