20 million pregnant women with GBS worldwide: deaths, data on disability, and delivering change

​Professor Joy Lawn, BMedSci, MB BS, MPH, PhD, FRCPCH, FMedSci

​Professor Joy Lawn, BMedSci, MB BS, MPH, PhD, FRCPCH, FMedSci

About Keynote speaker

Joy is an African-born, British-trained paediatrician and perinatal epidemiologist with 30 years’ experience including: clinical care, epidemiological burden estimates, design and evaluation of maternal, newborn and child care services at scale, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Her paediatric training was in the UK, followed by teaching, implementation and research, mainly living in Africa, including a decade with Save the Children. 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 and was mostly based in Africa.

​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 the relevant Sustainable Development Goal target. She has published >280 peer-reviewed papers 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 research leadership, especially mentoring those from LMICS and women. She is one of the few women nominated to membership of both UK Academy of Medical Sciences and USA National Academy of Medicine.