Dr. Noha Gomaa BDS, MSc, PhD

Noha is an Assistant Professor in the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western University in London, Ontario. She is a dentist and an oral pathologist, with interdisciplinary training in laboratory medicine and pathobiology, social epidemiology and population health. Noha completed her PhD at the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Toronto in a Collaborative Program in Public Health Policy with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Passionate about the “biology of social adversity”, her doctoral work characterized innate immunophenotypes associating with adverse socioeconomic exposures and psychosocial stress. Noha completed postdoctoral research at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Noha’s postdoctoral research integrated social epigenomics and neuroimaging data to understand the impact of early life adversity and stress on neurodevelopment. In pursuit of this work, she received the Restracomp Award from SickKids Research Institute. With the purpose of translating research to policy, Noha has worked on projects in collaboration with the provincial ministry of health and other policymakers to design evidence-based programs for the delivery of uninsured health services to children from low-income families and refugees to Canada. Ultimately, Noha hopes that her work can be geared towards developing evidence-informed, precision child health approaches that can help vulnerable children and their families.

Research interests: social inequalities, child health, neurodevelopment, social epigenetics, pain, stress