Hibah Osman

Hibah Osman is the Director of the Palliative and Supportive Care Program at the American University of Beirut Medical Center and a palliative care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her focus is primarily on program development and advocacy in palliative care, and actively contributes to policy development and capacity building both nationally and internationally. She is lead author of the Atlas of Palliative Care in the Easter Mediterranean Region and co-chaired committee that developed ASCOs palliative care resource-stratified guideline.

Dr. Osman was in practice as a family physician when she identified the absence of palliative care as a major gap in the Lebanese healthcare system. In 2008 she began shifting her efforts towards developing palliative care in Lebanon and the Eastern Mediterranean region and eventually left family medicine to focus exclusively on palliative care. She founded Balsam – the Lebanese Center for Palliative Care an NGO that provides home-based palliative care in 2010. Through her work at Balsam, she worked actively on raising awareness among policy makers, health providers and in the community. Her efforts led to the recognition of palliative care as a medical specialty in Lebanon in 2013. She developed and delivered training programs in Lebanon and other countries in the region targeting physicians, nurses, pharmacists and social workers. She also supported several hospitals in their efforts to establish a palliative care culture and palliative care programs. She has been working on integrating palliative care into the health insurance system in Lebanon as a step towards achieving full integration of palliative care into the healthcare system.

Dr. Osman serves on the National Committee on Pain Control and Palliative Care in the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health and Chair of its Subcommittee on Practice. She is founding Director of the Palliative and Supportive Care Program at the American University of Beirut Medical Center’s Naef K. Basile Cancer Institute - the first hospital-based palliative care program in Lebanon.

Dr. Osman joined the IAHPC Board of Directors in 2019. She hopes to contribute to research, guideline and policy development through IAHPC.

Dr. Osman has 3 children. She enjoys travel, nature and outdoor activities and spends much of her free time hiking, running and skiing.