Dr. Amber Alayyan, MD, is a pediatrician and the director of MSF USA’s Medical Unit. She has worked with MSF for over 15 years and has two decades’ experience in health care and humanitarian medicine. Her professional and research concentrations have included operational planning and implementation of population-wide health services, pediatrics, malnutrition, and environmental health in conflict and post-conflict zones, particularly in the Middle East.

Prior to joining MSF USA in 2025, Dr. Alayyan served as MSF’s deputy cell manager for Afghanistan, Palestine, and Haiti and previously for Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, and Peru. She also worked as an MSF nutrition advisor. Her international assignments with MSF have included emergency, project- and coordination-level roles in the Central African Republic, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Croatia, and Greece. In addition to her current position with MSF, she provides outpatient pediatric primary and urgent care in the Washington, DC area.

Dr. Alayyan has worked as a pediatrician at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC, where she also completed her pediatric residency. She served as a consultant for the World Health Organization in the Occupied Palestinian Territories on pediatric malnutrition policy and with Health Frontiers in post-earthquake Haiti. She was also a Fulbright Scholar and David L. Boren Fellow in environmental health research in the Palestinian Territories and Israel.

Dr. Alayyan obtained her medical degree at New York University School of Medicine, her Master of Science in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and her undergraduate degree in Middle East Studies and Microbiology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.