Nisreen Alwan

Nisreen Ala-Din A. S. Alwan MBE is a British–Iraqi public health researcher who is a professor of Public Health at the University of Southampton. Her research considers maternal and child health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Alwan used social media to communicate public health messages and to call for long covid to be counted and measured. In 2020, Alwan was selected as one of the BBC's top 100 Women.

Nisreen Ala-Din A S Alwan
Alma mater	University of Nottingham University of Leeds University of Baghdad
Awards	100 Women (BBC)
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Southampton
Thesis	The effect of maternal iron status and intake during pregnancy on cardiovascular disease risk in the offspring. (2014)

Early life and education

Alwan studied medicine at the University of Baghdad.^[1][2] During her studies she became interested in public health, and pursued a graduate degree in public health at the University of Nottingham. She joined the public health training programme in Yorkshire and the Humber, during which she was awarded a Wellcome Trust training fellowship. Alwan went on to earn a master's degree in statistical epidemiology and doctorate in nutritional epidemiology.^[3]

Research and career

Alwan studies maternal and child health focusing on obesity and birth outcomes.^[4]

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Alwan became infected with coronavirus.^[5] This experience inspired her to become a more public-facing health campaigner. In particular, she made use of Twitter to communicate public health messages, and to lead a call for long COVID^[6] to be counted and reported in national data.^[7][8] Her efforts resulted in the broader medical community paying more attention to long COVID and how it presented clinically.^[7] She was part of a group of medics who wrote a letter to the government asking them to improve research and surveillance of long COVID.^[9][10] She wrote several opinion articles for Nature, The Huffington Post, The Lancet and The BMJ.^{[11][12][13][14]}

She has also spoken out about equality of treatment of women and ethnic minorities in academia and the public sphere.^[15][16]

Awards and honours

• 2020 100 Women (BBC)^[17]
• Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2021 New Year Honours^[18]

Selected publications

• Alwan, Nisreen (2020). "A negative COVID-19 test does not mean recovery". Nature. 584 (170): 170. Bibcode:2020Natur.584..170A. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-02335-z. PMID 32782377. S2CID 221110462.
• Nykjaer, Camilla; Alwan, Nisreen A.; Greenwood, Darren C.; Simpson, Nigel A. B.; Hay, Alastair W. M.; White, Kay L. M.; Cade, Janet E. (1 June 2014). "Maternal alcohol intake prior to and during pregnancy and risk of adverse birth outcomes: evidence from a British cohort". J Epidemiol Community Health. 68 (6): 542–549. doi:10.1136/jech-2013-202934. ISSN 0143-005X. PMC 4033207. PMID 24616351.
• Alwan, N. A.; Greenwood, D. C.; Simpson, N. A. B.; McArdle, H. J.; Godfrey, K. M.; Cade, J. E. (7 February 2011). "Dietary iron intake during early pregnancy and birth outcomes in a cohort of British women". Human Reproduction. 26 (4): 911–919. doi:10.1093/humrep/der005. ISSN 0268-1161. PMC 3057752. PMID 21303776.
• Alwan, Nisreen; Tuffnell, Derek J; West, Jane (8 July 2009). "Treatments for gestational diabetes". Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2009 (3): CD003395. doi:10.1002/14651858.cd003395.pub2. ISSN 1465-1858. PMC 7154381. PMID 19588341.

References

1. . WHO. Archived from the original on 27 February 2018. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
2. Alwan, Nisreen A. (13 July 2011). "The killing of doctors in Iraq must stop". BMJ. 343: d4467. doi:10.1136/bmj.d4467. ISSN 0959-8138. PMID 21752860. S2CID 635869.
3. "Dr Nisreen Alwan | Medicine | University of Southampton". www.southampton.ac.uk. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
4. "Researchers find weight loss between pregnancies is linked to premature births". ITV News. 6 December 2019. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
5. "Nisreen A Alwan: What exactly is mild covid-19?". The BMJ. 28 July 2020. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
6. Alwan, Nisreen (11 August 2020). Nisreen Alwan. "A negative COVID-19 test does not mean recovery". Nature. 584 (7820): 170. Bibcode:2020Natur.584..170A. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-02335-z. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 32782377.
7. "Leading Long COVID campaigner amongst BBC 100 Women for 2020 | University of Southampton". www.southampton.ac.uk. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
8. "What is long Covid? What we know about the people experiencing long-term coronavirus symptoms". inews.co.uk. 8 September 2020. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
9. "Long COVID: The after-effects of a global pandemic". Sky News. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
10. Alwan, Nisreen A. (5 September 2020). "Surveillance is underestimating the burden of the COVID-19 pandemic". The Lancet. 396 (10252): e24. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31823-7. ISSN 0140-6736. PMC 7836224. PMID 32861312.
11. Alwan, Nisreen A.; Burgess, Rochelle Ann; Ashworth, Simon; Beale, Rupert; Bhadelia, Nahid; Bogaert, Debby; Dowd, Jennifer; Eckerle, Isabella; Goldman, Lynn R.; Greenhalgh, Trisha; Gurdasani, Deepti (31 October 2020). "Scientific consensus on the COVID-19 pandemic: we need to act now". The Lancet. 396 (10260): e71–e72. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32153-X. ISSN 0140-6736. PMC 7557300. PMID 33069277.
12. Godlee, Fiona (3 September 2020). "Living with covid-19". BMJ. 370: m3392. doi:10.1136/bmj.m3392. ISSN 1756-1833.
13. "Nisreen A Alwan: What exactly is mild covid-19?". The BMJ. 28 July 2020. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
14. Alwan, Nisreen A. (11 August 2020). "A negative COVID-19 test does not mean recovery". Nature. 584 (7820): 170. Bibcode:2020Natur.584..170A. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-02335-z. PMID 32782377.
15. Ro, Christine. "Why we use women's professional titles less than men's". www.bbc.com. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
16. "Nisreen Alwan: Let's equalise our antiracist language". The BMJ. 3 July 2020. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
17. "BBC 100 Women 2020: Who is on the list this year?". BBC News. 23 November 2020. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
18. "Awards for New Year Honours List 2021" (PDF). service.gov.uk. 2021.