Ali Abu-Alfa, MD, FASN, FAHA, FISN was appointed as the 22nd chairperson of the Department of Internal Medicine at the American University of Beirut (AUB), effective September 1, 2023. He is a professor adjunct of medicine (nephrology) at Yale School of Medicine and a tenured professor of medicine at AUB.
“With this new role, I hope to strengthen and grow the ties between AUB and Yale in areas of common interest,” Abu-Alfa said. He joined Yale as a fellow in nephrology in 1990 and served on the full-time faculty until 2010, when he moved to AUB to become head of the Division of Nephrology and Hypertension.
Abu-Alfa is among the first cohort of 80 global leaders in nephrology to be granted Fellow of the International Society of Nephrology (FISN) status, a new professional accolade awarded to ISN members who have demonstrated outstanding professional accomplishments or made other significant contributions to the specialty of nephrology.
For over two decades, Abu-Alfa has been involved in many activities of the ISN, most recently finalizing the ISN-Global Kidney Health Atlas report for the Middle East region. This past April, he assumed the role of chair of the ISN Renal Disaster Preparedness Working Group, which helps to manage disruptions of kidney care-related services. Recent wars and earthquakes have put thousands of patients at risk of losing access to dialysis or immunosuppressive medications, Abu-Alfa said, emphasizing the plight of renal patients during crises.
A strong advocate for wider use of peritoneal dialysis (PD) worldwide, Abu-Alfa is working to make the treatment more accessible and affordable. Many thousands of patients die each year without access to this therapy, he said. To this end, he is co-organizing the next International Society for Peritoneal Dialysis global congress, titled “Peritoneal Dialysis—Achieving Equity Through Universal Access,” to be held in Dubai, UAE, on September 26–29, 2023.
Abu-Alfa has focused on PD since his early years at Yale. “I look forward to continuing the Yale legacy of advocacy and to increasing the utilization of PD on a global level,” he said.