Shams El Arifeen is the first director of the newly established Centre for Child and Adolescent Health at ICDDR,B. Shams is also a professor at the James P. Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University in Bangladesh, where he teaches epidemiology.

Shams has nearly 25 years of experience in child and neonatal health, health services and health systems research, including nine years in government health services, with a focus on health interventions for developing populations. He also has extensive experience in research, and evaluations, with particular expertise in cluster randomized trials, large-scale surveys as well as with community and facility-based evaluations of interventions and programs, using both experimental and quasi-experimental designs.

Shams actively participates in national efforts within Bangladesh to scale up evidence-based neonatal and child health interventions. He currently leads the team assisting the government of Bangladesh and its partners in monitoring and evaluating health services and programmes.

Shams has served on a number of Bangladesh’s technical and advisory committees, including the National Committee on Immunization Practices, Technical Sub-Committee on National Newborn Health Strategy and the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey, Urban Health Survey and Bangladesh Maternal Mortality Survey technical committees.

Shams contributed to the 2003 Lancet Series on Child Survival and has published more than 140 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Shams holds an MBBS and DrPH and is trained in medicine, public health, nutrition and epidemiology.