Afarin Rahimi Movaghar MD PhD

Current Position: Professor of Psychiatry, Director of the Iranian National Center for Addiction Studies (INCAS), Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Dr. Afarin Rahimi-Movaghar has more than 20 years of experience in policy-making and research in the fields of substance use and mental health. She has served in several national level positions, including as the director of the offices on mental health and substance use services in the Iranian Ministry of Health, as well as director of the national mental health research department.

Her research experiences consist of directing several national surveys –including Iranian national Mental Health survey, qualitative studies, scientometric studies as well as systematic reviews. Dr. Rahimi’s main interests are in the fields of health service research and epidemiology. She has numerous publications in these fields. She has been a member or principal investigator for developing several national or global evidence-based guidelines on mental disorders and substance dependence.

Dr. Rahimi has done three reviews on substance use situation and interventions in the Middle East and North Africa in the years 2002, 2008 and 2012. She has been a consultant for several programs for MENA region countries and member of several advisory committees for the WHO headquarter and United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC).