Dr T. Alafia Samuels

T. Alafia Samuels is Retired Professor / Research Fellow at the Caribbean Institute for Health Research (CAIHR), University of the West Indies (UWI), Jamaica, and the former Director of the George Alleyne Chronic Disease Research Centre, CAIHR, UWI in Barbados. She is a medical doctor, trained at UWI Mona, Jamaica. She also holds a Masters in Public Health and a PhD in Chronic Disease Epidemiology, from Johns Hopkins University. She received the 2019 Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) award.
 
She was the co-Principal Investigator for the formal evaluation of the CARICOM Heads of Government 2007 Port of Spain NCD Summit Declaration and is currently the Principal Investigator for the follow-on project, “Improving Household Nutrition Security and Public Health in CARICOM”. She is NCD Advisor to Healthy Caribbean Coalition, Chair elect of NCD Child, Lancet Commissioner for their One Health commission and a member of the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group (STAG) on NCDs.  
 
Her research interests include policy and practice in NCD prevention and control, clinical quality of care, evaluation of NCD programmes and translation of evidence into practice. 
 
She has co-authored many Technical Reports and has over 60 peer reviewed publications.  Additionally, she has worked as a consultant to PAHO, CARPHA and NGO’s including Healthy Coalition of the Caribbean. She is a strident advocate and a Lancet profile dubbed her “the fast food watchdog of the Caribbean”.