9th G-I-N conference overview
Najoua Mlika-Cabanne, MD PhD
Member of the G-I-N Executive Committee; Member of the G-I-N Board of Trustees 2003/2004 until 2009/2010; Honorary Patron of the Guidelines International Network, appointed 2010
Najoua Mlika Cabanne – an appreciation
We are saddened to hear of the death on 7 November 2011 of Najoua who served on the G-I-N Board from its inception until 2010. Najoua’s energy, enthusiasm for life and hard work masked a long term battle with cancer, which she fought every inch of the way. She was a fantastic cook and hostess and no-one who had the privilege of visiting her home could ever forget the wonderful atmosphere.
Najoua was a strong believer in collaboration. She established the Evidence Tables Working Group, produced the first templates and published the results. She was an advocate for the development of GINDER which she followed until its launch. Najoua was also heavily involved in developing support for low income countries and had hoped to take this agenda forward through G-I-N.
Our thoughts go to Najoua’s family, particularly her husband Pierre-Marie and her children Inès and Alexandre. G-I-N has truly lost a friend.
Najoua Mlika-Cabanne graduated in medicine from Sousse Medical Faculty in Tunisia in 1982. From a local government post in public health in Tunisia, Najoua moved to clinical research in France first at the well-known Institut Gustave Roussy cancer centre and then at INSERM, the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research.
Currently, Najoua was deputy head of the Guidelines Department at the Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS, French National Authority for Health). She has been in charge of various aspects of the development of clinical practice guidelines for over 10 years: drafting of guidelines, managing a team of guideline developers, and university teaching, in particular courses on medical statistics, quality management, and assessment of health systems. In her post at HAS, she liaised with experts in a very wide variety of aspects of the development of quality of care and health technology assessment.
Since 2000, Najoua has been increasingly involved in national and international partnerships. She was on the committee for the assessment of national registers at the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance (InVS), was the mandated HAS representative for several collaborative international projects (for example, CoCanCPG), and was an active member of the International Review Panel of the International Society for Quality in Healthcare (ISQUA), the ADAPTE collaboration, and G-I-N.
Najoua was elected to the G-I-N Board in 2003 and was co-chairman of the International Working Group on Evidence Tables. She was also a co-editor of enGINe, the G-I-N newsletter.
