Alafia Samuels

T. Alafia Samuels (born 1953) is a medical doctor with specialisations in public health and epidemiology, and an honorary professor at the Caribbean Institute for Health Research, University of the West Indies (UWI) in Mona, Jamaica. Since January 2022, Samuels has chaired NCD Child, a global coalition focused on the needs of young people with non-communicable diseases (NCDs). She also co-chairs the World Obesity's Policy & Prevention Committee, is a member of the World Health Organisation Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on NCDs, and serves as a Lancet One Health Commissioner and Advisor to the Healthy Caribbean Coalition.
Early life
Samuels was born in 1953 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Both her mother from Jamaica and her father from Sierra Leone were in the USA attending university. When her parents completed their studies, she left the US (aged one) and spent her early childhood in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Canada, before settling in Jamaica at age 7, where she has lived for most of her life.
After graduating from St. Andrew High School in 1970, she began working as a journalist at SWING, a Jamaican music and culture magazine that helped put the reggae genre on a global platform.
Education
Samuels earned her medical degree from UWI, Mona, Jamaica in 1976. In 1980, she earned her master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University. She later returned and completed her PhD in chronic disease epidemiology in 2005, graduating Phi Beta Kappa honors. Her doctoral thesis was "Missed Opportunities in Diabetes Management: A Longitudinal Assessment of Factors Associated with Sub-Optimal Quality."
From 1984 to 1988, Samuels was a lecturer in the Faculty of Medical Sciences at UWI Mona, Jamaica. In 2009, after completing her PhD, she was appointed a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Medical Sciences at UWI Cave Hill, Barbados. There she also served as director of PhD programs in public health and epidemiology.
From 2015 to 2019, Samuels was the director of UWI's George Alleyne Chronic Disease Research Centre, which assesses the incidence, prevalence, and risks of NCDs.
She was the lead author of the Barbados Ministry of Health Strategic Plan of Action for NCDs 2015-2019, and the CARICOM/PAHO Strategic Plan of Action for the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases.
Samuels has expressed support for taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages and disapproval of aggressive fast food marketing geared towards primary school children. She has also actively addressed the needs of small island developing states (SIDS), which can face vulnerabilities ranging from underresourced health systems to supply chain complications to a higher rate of natural disasters and a higher susceptibility to climate change impact. Many of these countries are contending with rates of obesity and NCDs that often match or exceed the rates in mainland western nations.
Her main research interests involve the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), along with quality evaluation of NCD programs.
Works
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