Joy is an African-born, British-trained paediatrician and perinatal epidemiologist with 30 years’ experience especially in sub-Saharan Africa including: epidemiological burden estimates for WHO, and complex evaluation of maternal, newborn and child care services. Her paediatric training was in the UK, followed by teaching, clinical care, implementation and research, mainly living in Africa. Her MPH was from Emory, Atlanta, USA, whilst at CDC, and her PhD at Institute of Child Health, London. For 10 years, she was Director of Evidence and Policy for Saving Newborn Lives/Save the Children. She is currently Director of the MARCH Centre (Maternal Adolescent Reproductive & Child Health) at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, including more than 400 academics. Her main contribution to global health has been developing the evidence-base to measure and reduce the global burden of 2.5 million neonatal deaths, >2 million stillbirths, and 15 million preterm births, including informing Sustainable Development Goal targets. She has published >290 peer-reviewed papers with a H-index of 109, including leading several influential Lancet series, with wide media and policy uptake. She and her research team work on multi-country studies on newborn health, stillbirths and child development worldwide, including NEST360 and novel work on Group B Streptococcus. She is a champion for equitable and diverse research leadership. She is one of the few women nominated to membership of both UK Academy of Medical Sciences and USA National Academy of Medicine.
