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Dr. Forrester is the professor of experimental medicine 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 also the founding director of the Tropical Medicine Research Institute and spearheaded 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.

Since 1999, he has received at least 16 research grants from various funding agencies to assist with his work to better understand the underlying basis of hypertension and insulin resistance. In particular he has been pursuing discovery research to understand how man adapts to nutritional stress and the costs and consequences of such adaptation to the risk of obesity, hypertension and insulin resistance. The three areas of work with which he has been involved are intermediary metabolism in children with severe malnutrition, hypertension research, and research into the developmental origins of health and disease.

Dr. 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 has served in an advisory capacity to several health organizations, including the Caribbean Community’s Caribbean Commission of 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.

Dr. Forrester joined the board of the Pan American Health and Education Foundation in 2009.