Cultivating Equity in Health
Independent, data-driven research on the policy, governance and rebuilding of health systems. Rooted in Syria, informing global health.
Evidence for a system being rebuilt.
Syria is entering the most consequential period for its health system in a generation. Decisions being made now, on how care is financed, how medicines are supplied, and how services reach people, will shape health outcomes for decades. Yet the evidence available to guide those decisions is thin, fragmented, and often produced far from the realities it describes.
SHEPL exists to close that gap. We are an independent research lab founded by twin researchers from Damascus, trained in Syria's pharmacies and clinics and specialized at Edinburgh and LSHTM. But our work does not end at analysis. Everything we produce is built to be used: by ministries deciding how care is funded, by organisations designing programmes on the ground, and by donors deciding where support will do the most good.
SHEPL is led by Sham and Haya Alhousiki, pharmacists by training and health researchers by specialisation, who practised in Damascus through the hardest years of Syria's health crisis before completing postgraduate training at the University of Edinburgh and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Haya is based in Damascus, working inside the systems being rebuilt. Sham is based in Edinburgh, within the research and policy landscape that shapes how the world engages with them. Their work meets in the middle: medicines and systems, data and fieldwork, Syria and the UK.
Grounded in Practice, Led by Research
From Evidence to Decisions
Our work spans four connected areas: health financing and universal coverage, medicines access and pharmaceutical policy, health systems evaluation, and health data. Across all of them, the output is the same: analysis that ministries, organisations and donors can act on, built for the realities of fragile settings.
Read our Work
Research, analysis and field notes on Syria's health system, and the policies, data and people rebuilding it. From medicine supply in Syrian households to the financing choices shaping recovery.
"Resilient health systems are not rebuilt by circumstance. They are built by evidence, and by the will to act on it, from the research desk to the policy table."
Sham Alhousiki, Co-Director
"Health systems are not rebuilt from above. They are rebuilt clinic by clinic, community by community, through cooperation that reaches every governorate."
Haya Alhousiki, Co-Director
Working on health in Syria or the region?
Whether you're scoping a programme, evaluating one, or looking for Syria-specific evidence, we'd welcome a conversation.
Email
alhousikis@gmail.com