Qatar & Implementation Science: Day 1 reflections
Driving Change: Regional Conference on Health and Emerging Fields in Implementation Science
December 5, 2025 — Doha, Qatar
Implementation science in the Middle East may be redefining what public health can be. That was my overwhelming impression after an energizing first day at the Driving Change conference hosted at Qatar University. As someone who has worked across implementation, evaluation, and community systems for two decades, it was striking to see just how intentionally Qatar’s public health leaders are positioning implementation as both a scientific discipline and a national priority.
According to Dean Hanan Abdul Rahim, “implementation is the new science of public health.” After spending a full day with scholars, practitioners, and policymakers from across the region, I think she might be right.
Is Implementation Science… a Science? The Opening Provocation
The day began with a question that quietly followed us around the conference halls: Is implementation science actually a science—or something else?
This challenge came from Prof. Herbert Peterson (UNC-Chapel Hill) during his keynote, The Science for Implementation: Where Are We and Where Do We Want to Be? His talk set the tone for the day: energizing, interrogative, and more than a little disruptive.
Peterson’s question was an invitation. What does it mean to claim “science” status? And what responsibilities come with that claim? That theme kept resurfacing all day.
Implementation Across Contexts: From Cancer Prevention to Sexual Health
Following Peterson, the keynotes from Prof. Fadi El-Jardali (American University of Beirut) and Prof. Ramzi Salloum (University of Florida) layered in the pragmatic realities of implementing evidence in real health systems—especially in LMICs.
El-Jardali, who joked that he wished he had studied engineering, walked us through how the Knowledge to Policy (K2P) Center bridges research, policymaking, and evidence-informed decision-making.
As readers of TWIPH know, I’ve long argued that policy remains one of the most underutilized levers in community-based work. Hearing El-Jardali articulate a full systems approach to policy-embedded implementation was refreshing and validating.
Salloum’s keynote on cancer prevention and control placed greater emphasis on organizational readiness. As someone trained by Abe Wandersman , I felt some satisfaction hearing readiness framed not as an optional “nice to know,” but as a critical determinant of implementation success.
A Region Asking Hard Questions About Funders, Power, and Evidence
One of the most pragmatic sessions of the day was the Panel on the Role of Funders in Advancing Implementation Science, featuring:
- Dr. Qamar Mahmood, IDRC
- Dr. Sadim Jawhar, QRDI
- Dr. Arash Rashidian, WHO
- Additional insights from a representative of the Qatar Fund for Development (whose name I didn’t catch, sorry!)
Parallel Sessions: A Tour Across Regions, Methods, and Realities
Because I was moderating one of the thematic rooms, I couldn’t attend everything, but the diversity of presentations was remarkable. The Day 1 agenda shows just how wide-ranging the topics were—from optometry and retinal genetics in Palestine, to war-related child protection, to tobacco brief intervention in Qatar, to Malaysia’s neighborhood health planning interventions.
1. Implementation in crisis and conflict contexts
Presenters from Nepal, Lebanon, Somalia, and Palestine explored how to operationalize community engagement, sexual education, brief interventions, and wartime mental health practices in settings where infrastructure itself is unstable.
2. The centrality of context
Frameworks like CFIR, EPIS, and TDF made appearances throughout, but presenters often emphasized that “adaptation” is not enough and that implementation must be designed for the system, not despite it.
3. Technology as both opportunity and challenge
This leads us to the session that may end up reshaping how I think about implementation entirely.
The Most Disruptive Idea of the Day: Multiplex Systems & the Future of AI in Health
The final talk I attended, and possibly the most intellectually provocative of the conference, came from Prof. Junaid Qadir (Qatar University), who presented his work on Multiplex Systems and a “both-and” approach to modeling in health, AI, and crisis settings. Primarily a computer scientist, Qadir argues that our dominant implementation and health models still rely too heavily on linear causality, biomedical reductionism, and prediction-heavy logics that fail to incorporate:
- lived experience
- relationality
- uncertainty
- spiritual domains of health
In his paper, he goes more into his framework’s six principles:
- Multiplex ontology – humans as multi-layered beings (material, metaphysical, spiritual)
- Multiplex epistemology – integrating empirical + experiential + interpretive knowledge
- Pluralistic modeling – mechanistic + statistical + semiotic
- Critical complexity – health as emergent and irreducible
- Triangulated science – balancing Big Data and Small Data
- Comparative multiplex ethics – grounded partly in Islamic BioFiqh
I have at least 100 follow-up questions for Dr. Qadir, and they will absolutely become future blog posts.
And Finally: Dinner at Bayt El Talleh
I was told that Doha in December can be magical. After a full day of big ideas, provocative debates, and rich regional insights, the dinner at Bayt El Talleh offered the perfect space to continue the conversations that started on stage.
The question that opened the day resurfaced: “What does it mean to say implementation science is a science?”
After Day One, I’m starting to think the more important question might be: “What do we need implementation science to become?”
This conference is pushing that conversation forward boldly and globally.
More reflections coming soon.
