Prof Betty Kirkwood

Betty Kirkwood is an epidemiologist with a statistical background. She is Professor of Epidemiology & International Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her research is driven by a desire to improve the health of mothers and young children in low and middle-income countries, and to increase access to known effective interventions.

It is focused on informing priority policy issues through tackling gaps in evidence to enable effective decision making for policies and programmes.

She has made major contributions in the following areas: (i) Cluster randomized controlled trials evaluating the delivery through community-based workers of key known effective interventions for (a) newborn and child survival, and (b) early child development and growth; (ii) Definitive trials evaluating vitamin A supplementation strategies; (iii) Evaluating key maternal, newborn and child health interventions (including breastfeeding, access to facility births, water supply and sanitation) (iv) Increasing access to treatments for common mental disorders; (v) Understanding the epidemiology of childhood diarrhea and pneumonia.

Her substantive research has been accompanied by a commitment to translating research findings into health policy and programme action, to teaching, to research capacity strengthening, and to making complex epidemiological and statistical methods accessible to public health researchers and policy makers. The latter is exemplified by the success of her “Essential Medical Statistics” textbook, first published in 1988. Betty has an extensive network of overseas collaborators and close links with the World Health Organization.

She is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a fellow (by distinction) of the UK Faculty of Public Health. In 2017, she received the George Macdonald medal in recognition of outstanding research leading to improvement of health in the tropics.