Dr. Jihaan Hassan Shibis is the Deputy Director and Co-Founder of Caafimaad 360°, bringing over 15 years of experience as a pediatrician, educator, researcher, and health systems leader in Europe and Somalia.

She earned her medical degree from Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands and completed postgraduate pediatric specialty training in the United Kingdom, where she served as a Consultant Pediatrician and led pediatric high-dependency care at a major London hospital. Her clinical experience across the Netherlands, the UK, and Somalia shaped her understanding of how access to accurate, context-appropriate health information, or the lack of it, can significantly influence health outcomes in both robust and fragile health systems.

Since returning to Somalia, Dr. Hassan has held leadership positions that bridge academia, health services, and research. As Head of the Medical Program at SIMAD University and later as General Director of Dr. Sumait Hospital, she led reforms to improve medical education, strengthen hospital governance, and enhance quality of care. These roles exposed her to a critical and often overlooked challenge: even when health services exist, misinformation, low health literacy, and weak communication systems can severely undermine their impact.

This realization inspired the founding of Caafimaad 360°, based on the conviction that improving health outcomes in Somalia requires not only stronger services but also sustained, trusted, and culturally relevant health communication. She believes that closing the country’s health knowledge gap is essential to building a resilient, health-literate society capable of making informed decisions.

She previously served as Steering Committee Chair of the AFYA Consortium, a multinational partnership advancing research and capacity development in low- and middle-income countries. She currently contributes to clinical and humanitarian research at the SIMAD Institute for Global Health (SIGHt) and Evidence for Change (E4C), working across themes such as infectious diseases, maternal and child health, sexual and reproductive health, nutrition, mortality, and health systems strengthening.

Dr. Jihaan is deeply committed to translating complex medical knowledge into accessible, culturally grounded guidance. Together with co-founder Dr. Najib, she brings practice-informed leadership that drives the organization’s vision: to build Somalia’s leading and most trusted health communication hub, where evidence-based health dialogue becomes a part of everyday life and a catalyst for healthier communities.