Arin A. Balalian (AUA MPH 2011) Starts Doctoral Studies at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY, USA

Dr. Arin A. Balalian MD, MPH has joined the DrPH program in Epidemiology offered at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Balalian’s research interests include life course and chronic diseases epidemiology, particularly the effect of childhood adversities on subsequent development and risk of disease. Columbia University is ranked among the top ten universities by Academic Ranking of World Universities and Mailman School of Public Health has been ranked among the top five schools of public health by the US News and World Report.
Dr. Balalian was the Monitoring and Evaluation officer in Mission East (ME) Armenia before joining the doctoral program. He was responsible for the overall Monitoring & Evaluation of “Improving HIV prevention counseling and testing among migrants in Armenia” project which is a part of the Armenian National HIV prevention program funded by Global Fund. During his appointment in the Mission East Armenia, Dr. Balalian assisted ME team in periodic review of all indicators related to the program, data flow management, provided monitoring reports and designed new healthcare programs.

In 2011, Dr. Balalian joined the Ministry of Health (MoH) of the Republic of Armenia (RA) as a National Consultant for two months to assist the Deputy Minister of Health in creating a road map to develop Armenian National Health Strategy. In 2012-2014, Dr. Balalian worked at the Fund for Armenian Relief (FAR) as Healthcare and Social Programs Officer. He was involved in multiple projects. In this position Dr. Balalian worked with USAID supported HS-STAR project to train the physicians in all the provinces of Armenia. Dr. Balalian later joined the monitoring and evaluation team of the same project as evaluation assistant and the results of the evaluation were published in an international peer reviewed journal. Dr. Balalian led the qualitative evaluation of one of the FAR core programs, which was a joint training project with the Armenian American Health Professionals Organization aimed to train the physicians from Artsakh. He presented the results of this evaluation at the European Public Health Conference and the abstract was published in the European Journal of Public Health. The article “Adapting continuing medical education for post-conflict areas: assessment in Nagorno Karabagh – a qualitative study” was published in August 2014 Volume 12, Issue 39. The findings are important not only for Artsakh but also for other post-conflict areas where infrastructures are destroyed and health human resources need trainings. Dr. Balalian also worked on a program that aimed to address the malnutrition problem in one of the border regions of Armenia-Berd. He led the assessment exploring the trends and determinants of malnutrition among preschool children in Berd region. Dr. Balalian earned his MPH degree in 2011 from the AUA School of Public Health and his MD degree from Yerevan State Medical University in 2010.