Emeritus Professor of Medicine
Faculty of Health Sciences
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Beer-Sheva, Israel
Dr. Ami D. Sperber is Emeritus Professor of Medicine in the Faculty of Health Sciences of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He was born and raised in New York City and immigrated to Israel at the age of 23. In 1981 he received his MD degree in Israel and in 1992 he completed an MSPH (Master of Science in Public Health) degree from the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education in the School of Public Health of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In addition to patient care, Dr. Sperber has conducted extensive research on IBS including (a) the local and global epidemiology of IBS and other DGBI (b) co-morbidity in DGBl, in particular sleep impairment and fibromyalgia, and (c) psychosocial aspects of DGBls. He is the author of a book, in Hebrew, on IBS for the general public in Israel, which emphasizes the biopsychosocial approach to diagnosis and treatment and presents an empathetic description of the disorder, its diagnosis and treatment. The book was translated into English and published by the IFFGD. It is available as an e-book on Amazon.
Dr. Sperber has led the Rome Foundation’s global initiative since its inception. In 2011 he initiated and cochaired the first international symposium on I BS-the Global Perspective. He chaired the RF Working Team on Multinational, Cross-cultural Research, which published its final report in January 2014 and has published three papers. Dr. Sperber was chair of the Rome IV chapter committee on Cross-cultural factors in DGBl, and head of the committee that prepared the educational slide set on the psychosocial aspects of IBS, and head of the committee that prepared a clinical algorithm on the Functional Abdominal Pain Syndrome. He is the ongoing head of the Rome Foundation Translation Project and co-chair of the Copyright and Licensing Committee. Most recently, Dr. Sperber initiated and served as chair of Rome’s Global Epidemiology Study, which encompassed 33 countries from around the world. This study has yielded 56 published papers to date with another 20 or more expected over the coming year.
Dr. Sperber has published on cross-cultural, multinational research and translation methodology and been invited to speak on these and other topics at meetings around the world.
