Susan Walker is Professor of Nutrition and Director of the Tropical Medicine Research Institute at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Jamaica. She heads the Child Development Research Group at UWI whose work in developing low cost approaches to promote children’s development and the rigorous evaluations have been critical in driving global attention to the importance of early stimulation for children under 3 years and has influenced the expansion of work and commitment in this area by several international agencies. Her recent work includes evaluation of two approaches to delivery of parenting programs feasible at scale in three Caribbean countries (supported by the Inter-American Development Bank) and development of a training package based on the Jamaica home visit program and evaluation of its implementation (supported by Grand Challenges Canada). She is an internationally recognized expert in global child development and was lead author in papers in the highly influential Lancet series (2007, 2011) on child development and a coordinator of the 2013 series on Maternal and Child Nutrition. She is now engaged in international efforts to inform scale up of interventions for young children and is a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Forum on Investing in Young Children Globally.
