Professor T. Alafia Samuels is the Director of the George Alleyne Chronic Disease Research Centre, University of the West Indies in Barbados. She is a medical doctor, trained at UWI Mona. She also holds a MPH (Masters in Public Health) and a PhD in Chronic Disease Epidemiology, from Johns Hopkins University. She is an appointed member of the multi-sectoral Barbados National NCD (Non Communicable Diseases) Commission and was the principal author of the Barbados Ministry of Health Strategic Plan of Action for NCDs 2015-2019. She was the Principal Investigator for the formal evaluation of the CARICOM Heads of Government 2007 Port of Spain NCD Summit Declaration, which received the Vice Chancellors Award for Excellence for Multi-campus research. She is currently the Principal Investigator for the follow-on project, also funded by the IDRC Canada, “Improving Household Nutrition Security in CARICOM” Her research interests include policy and practice in NCD prevention and control, clinical quality of care, evaluation of NCD programmes and translation of evidence