Sarah Assaad

Sarah is a visiting researcher at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and a Research Fellow in Cognitive Ageing and Dementia Epidemiology at University College London. Her research focuses on understanding the association between change in cognition and various socio-economic, social, and physical health factors in older age as part of the ELSA-HCAP project. She received the Cambridge Trust scholarship to pursue her PhD degree at the University of Cambridge, UK (2018-2022), analysing data from the CC75C study. She won the Emerging scholar Awards at the Ageing and Social Change Conferences (2019 and 2021) and successfully defended her thesis in May 2022. Her PhD research contributed to the derivation of a first longitudinal index of social wellbeing and a better understanding of the association between social health and the use of health and social care services in older age. Sarah also holds a BS in Medical Laboratory Sciences (2013) and a Master in Public Health with emphasis on Epidemiology and Biostatistics (2015) from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. She coordinated the implementation of the first 10/66 dementia cohort study in Lebanon (2016-2017) and contributed to the dissemination of findings in peer-reviewed articles and local and international conference presentations. For a full list of publications and scientific presentations, please refer to Sarah’s CV.