Rate My Professor Wael Al-Delaimy

Wael Al-Delaimy, MD, PhD, is a Professor in the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at the University of California, San Diego, and Division Chief of Global Health in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine. A multidisciplinary epidemiologist, he practiced medicine in Iraq and Jordan from 1991 to 1995 before earning his PhD in epidemiology from the University of Otago in New Zealand in 2000. From 2000 to 2004, he was a Research Fellow and Research Associate at Harvard School of Public Health and served as a scientist at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2003. He joined UC San Diego in 2004 as an Assistant Professor, advancing to Associate and Full Professor.

Dr. Al-Delaimy's research encompasses the epidemiology of chronic diseases such as tobacco, diet, cancer, and respiratory conditions; global mental health; climate change and environmental health; refugee health; and research ethics. He leads NIH Fogarty International Center programs including the GeoHealth Hub on Climate Change Health Impacts in the Middle East and North Africa, the Global Center on Climate Change and Health-Energy-Food-Health Systems involving 11 universities, and the Research Ethics Education Program in Jordan. As Public Mental Health Concentration Lead in the UC San Diego Masters of Public Health program, he directs the Global Mental Health Initiative and has secured over $14 million in grant funding. Key publications include "A prospective study of self-reported sleep duration and incident diabetes in women" (2003), "Influence of a diet very high in vegetables, fruit, and fiber and low in fat on prognosis following treatment for breast cancer: the Women's Healthy Eating and Living (WHEL) study" (2007), and recent articles on psychological symptoms in long COVID (2026) and climate crisis as a health crisis (2026). He co-led the Springer Nature e-book Health of People, Health of Planet, and Our Responsibility and introduced climate change to UCSD Health Sciences in 2014, contributing to the school's development. Awards include the UC San Diego Integrity Award (2024), PRIM&R Service Award (2025), and International Society for Environmental Epidemiology Appreciation for Service (2022). He chairs the International Joint Policy Committee of Societies of Epidemiology and serves as Section Editor for Current Environmental Health Reports.