Dr Dilys Walker

Dr. Dilys Walker is the director of the global maternal newborn child health research practice at the Institute for Global Health Sciences at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

She is also a Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, affiliate faculty at the University of California Berkeley, and spent 11 years as a Professor in Reproductive Health at the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico.

Dr. Walker has more than 20 years of global maternal newborn child health, family planning, and reproductive health research experience. Her principal areas of interest are in improving clinical quality of care to reduce mortality and morbidity through implementation trials addressing antenatal and obstetric care, designing and implementing innovative provider training strategies using highly realistic simulation as well as group models of antenatal care and introduction of obstetric ultrasound. Dr. Walker is also the president and co-founder of PRONTO International, an NGO dedicated to making birth safer for mothers, infants and their providers.

Dr. Walker is the Principal Investigator on five large global MNCH focused grants including the East Africa Preterm Birth Initiative and the LINQED project, and collaborates with partners in India, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Mexico, Malawi, Madagascar, and Guatemala. She received an undergraduate degree from the University of California Berkeley, her medical degree from the University of California San Diego, and her specialty training at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Walker completed her fellowship in family planning as the nation’s first family planning fellow. She is board certified from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as well as the Consejo Mexicana de Ginecologia y Obstetricia.

Dr. Walker serves on several technical advisory groups including the USAID Sustaining Technical and Analytic Resources program, the WorldVision Born on Time project, WHO Preterm Birth Estimates, and WHO Recommendations on Uterotonics for PPH Prevention.