Biography

Ishaq Abu-Arafeh was born in Jerusalem and qualified in Medicine (MBBS) from the University of Jordan in Amman, Jordan. He started his paediatric career in Bethlehem after junior internship in Jerusalem, Palestine. He moved to the UK and took higher specialist training in general paediatrics, neonatal intensive care and paediatric Neurology in Leeds, Cardiff, Sheffield and Aberdeen. As a research fellow to Professor George Russell, between 1991 and 1993, he established interest in headache and studied the epidemiology of headache and the periodic syndrome in Aberdeen schoolchildren, which was the subject of his postgraduate thesis for his MD from the University of Aberdeen.

Dr Abu-Arafeh is a Fellow, a Trustee and a Council member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. He is also a Council member of the British Paediatric Neurology Association. He is a co-founder of the Scottish Paediatric Neurology Group and he was the honorary secretary of the Scottish Paediatric Society (2003-11).

He took the post of a consultant in paediatrics and paediatric neurology at Forth Valley Royal Hospital and The Royal Hospital for Sick children in Glasgow, UK, in 1995 and continued his clinical and research interest in children's headache. He established the Headache Clinic at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow and it became one of the largest, if not the largest, headache service for children in the UK.

Dr Abu-Arafeh contributed to patient support groups as a medical advisor for Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome Association- UK and the Migraine Action Association. He is a member of the British Association for the Study of Headache and was chairperson of its paediatric committee between 2007 and 2011. He has been a member of the International Headache Society for the past 20 years and presented his work at several IHS congresses, starting with wining the prize for the best poster presentation in 1993 in Paris. He contributed to the International Classification of Headache Disorders II and III and gave invited lectures at several IHCs, Migraine Trust and EHMTIC Symposia.

Ishaq Abu-Arafeh plays an important role in raising awareness of childhood headache and medical education. He organised three Childhood Headache Symposia in the UK (London 2002 and 2006 and Glasgow 2008). He also took part in the development of the British Paediatric Neurology Association's Children Headache Teaching Course (CHaT -1), which has now become a well established course and has been run across many centres in the UK. He is the editor of 'Childhood Headache' which is now in its second edition.

On taking the chairmanship of the Child and Adolescent Standing Committee, Dr Abu-Arafeh aims to reach out to all IHS members working with children in order to be inclusive and raise the profile of issues related to childhood headache within the IHS and beyond.

Disclosures

Honoraria received from RB Pharmaceuticals for developing educational material, as Podcast and webinars