Danya Qato

About Danya Qato

DANYA QATO is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Preivously, she was a Fulbright Scholar based at Birzeit University in Palestine. She holds a PhD in Health and Pharmaceutical Services Research from the Brown University School of Public Health, a PharmD from the University of Illinois, and a Master of Public Health with a concentration in International Health and Humanitarian Studies from Harvard University. At Brown, Danya was funded as an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and National Institutes of Health doctoral and postdoctoral research fellow in Comparative Effectiveness Research. Her substantive areas of research pertain to pharmaceutical policy, environmental and global health, health systems development, and health disparities. She is a U.S. research fellow of the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) and the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is a member of both the Lancet Palestinian Health Alliance and the WHO Collaborating Center Working Group on Pharmacovigilance in the Arab World, based in Morocco.

Danya was born in Palestine and is a naturalized citizen. Her family lives in Illinois.

A central aspect of Danya's professional vision as a pharmacist is the responsibility of "integrating principles of rational drug use, education, and essential drug access within the public health and human rights discourse." As an Albert Schweitzer Fellow, she interned at the Marjorie Kovler Center for the Treatment of Survivors of Torture. Danya also founded the Chicago Palestine Film Festival in 2001, the longest, consistently held film festival of its kind. In 2003, Danya worked with the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committee documenting the health implications of human rights violations in the West Bank. The project was arranged by the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University.