Rima Afifi

Rima Afifi is a professor in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health, and Director of the Prevention Research Center for Rural Health (PRC-RH), at the College of Public Health, University of Iowa; and adjunct professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut.

Rima’s passion is to work with adolescents and young adults to craft environments conducive to their wellbeing. She is particularly interested in contexts of uncertainty, displacement or migration. Rima advocates for an emphasis on social, structural, and commercial determinants of health to promote equity, and justice.

She applies principles and methods of community-engaged research; uses frameworks and tools of implementation science; and emphasizes knowledge transfer to practice and policy.