Professor The Hon Terrence Forrester, OJ

Professor Forrester is the Professor of Experimental Medicine and Chief Scientist at UWI Solutions for Developing Countries at the University of the West Indies (UWI). He is a clinical scientist with a longstanding interest in the etiology and pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease, primarily hypertension. This work has been especially significant in the Caribbean and West African contexts, given the high and rising prevalence of hypertension in both and high death rate from cardio-metabolic disease in the Caribbean. He is the founding director of the Tropical Medicine Research Institute spearheading in 1999 the merger of the Tropical Metabolism Research Unit, Sickle Cell Unit, and the Epidemiology Research Unit on the Mona Campus of the UWI in Jamaica, and the Chronic Disease Research Centre at the Cave Hill Campus of the UWI in Barbados.

With support from international funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, USA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation he pursues a research programme to better understand the underlying basis of obesity, hypertension and diabetes. The special focus of this programme is to unravel the underlying mechanisms of the greater risk of these chronic diseases in populations suffering intergenerational under nutrition, and using these discoveries to craft and trial novel interventions aimed at better prevention or management.

Professor Forrester has received several awards in recognition of his work. In 2003, he received the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research at UWI. In 2006, he was the recipient of the prestigious Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence, one of the Region’s leading recognition programs. That same year, the inaugural Caribbean Laureate also earned the Boehrigher Ingleheim Award for Hypertension Research in Developing Countries. In 2010, he was awarded the Gold Musgrave Medal for excellence in science. He recently in August 2012 received the Order of Jamaica for his service to medical research.

He has served in an advisory capacity to several organizations, including the Caribbean Community’s Caribbean Commission on Health and Development, the Caribbean Health Research Council, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Society of Hypertension, the Pan American Health Organization (Advisory Committee on Health Research), the United Kingdom Medical Research Council, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization, and is a Trustee of the Pan American Health and Education Foundation as well as on Council of the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease Society. In addition he has been a Director of The National Commercial bank, and the National Health Fund.

For many years he worked on creating a new research unit within UWI.  This culminated in the establishment of  UWI Solutions for Developing Countries in January 2013.