Dr. Maallah graduated from the Medical College, Baghdad University in 2013 with a Bachelor Degree in Medicine and Surgery and completed her foundation training at the Medical City Teaching Hospitals in Baghdad, Iraq. Tackling health inequalities has captured her attention since she was a medical student when she volunteered for the National Cancer Research Centre at her home country.

In 2016, she joined the Master of Public Health at City University of London and graduated with a Distinction in 2017. 

Mina joined the NHS shortly after receiving the full GMC registration in 2019 and worked in medical and surgical departments as well as on phase I-III clinical trials at the London Northwest University Healthcare NHS Trust and at Oxford University, mainly focusing on Infectious diseases. Given her keen interest in research around public health, she seized every opportunity to work on public health-related projects and publications in addition to her clinical duties. She focused on tackling health inequalities and has several publications and presentations at international and regional conferences. 

Dr. Maallah joined the NIHR ARC NWL Improvement Leader Fellowship in 2023 as part of a trio with her colleagues from the Community Pharmacy Team: Marsha Alter and Shivali Lakhani, under the supervision and guidance of Prof. Mitch Blair, Professor of Paediatrics and Child Public Health at Imperial College London, and in collaboration with Dr. Austen El-Osta, the Director of the Self-Care Academic Research Unit (SCARU) at the Department of Primary Care & Public Health, Imperial College London. The project aims at investigating the barriers and drivers of setting a service in which the community pharmacy team can support in managing minor illnesses in children in NWL. Within this project, the team plans to collect data addressing the parents’ acceptability of this scheme and the reported needs of the Community Pharmacists to deliver this service through detailed surveys and interviews. Dr. Maallah successfully completed the fellowship program in 2024 and became an NIHR ARC Fellow, while the project was still ongoing.

Given Dr. Maallah’s relocation from Northwest London and her recent award of a PhD grant in Public Health to start in 2025, she decided to leave this project in the safe hands of her colleagues Marsha Alter and Shivali Lakhani, Professor Mitch Blair, and Dr. Austen El-Osta, to focus on her next academic journey.

Dr Maallah’s ambition is to complete a PhD in Public Health to seek an academic career path with an interest in tackling health inequalities in the underserved and underrepresented communities. Attending this Fellowship was a valuable opportunity for her to enhance her knowledge and skills about leadership, teamwork and engaging and communicating with stakeholders.