National Epidemiologist Gets CD for Over 20 Years of Exceptional Service

For a lifetime of work in addressing some of Jamaica’s most pressing health challenges, National Epidemiologist, Dr. Karen Webster Kerr, was on Monday (October 20) awarded the Order of Distinction in the Rank of Commander (CD).

It is a deserving recognition for exceptional service in the field of public health and epidemiology, dating over 20 years.

“It is a very deep honour to get this award. It comes with a level of expectation, and motivation to continue the work. I believe there are, in each phase and stage of my life in public health and epidemiology, a number of highlights,” she shares in an interview with JIS News.

As an epidemiologist, Dr. Webster Kerr studies the distribution, patterns, and causes of diseases and health-related conditions in the population.

She collects and analyses data to understand how diseases spread and identifies risk factors to inform the development of public health interventions like vaccination programmes or behavioural change campaigns.

Dr. Webster Kerr and her team at the National Epidemiology Branch were instrumental in the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling the country to contain the spread of the disease and to open before many other countries.

She tells JIS News that the team was responsible for putting data and other information together for updating government officials and the public “every single day”.

“The data allowed us to make interventions and for Jamaica to come out better than many other countries,” she points out.

She notes that during the early stages of the pandemic “it was very tough, and the team did not sleep for many days. Afterwards, we learned how to streamline things so that we could be more efficient. We made the effort to ensure that we were up-to-date every day, throughout the day, if necessary.”

Dr. Webster Kerr, who has been National Epidemiologist since 2013, tells JIS News that, initially, her ambition was to become a pediatrician.

However, it was while on a field trip to Portland during her third year of study at the University of the West Indies (UWI) that she made the decision to switch to public health.

“I saw how the public health team worked together and managed the community. It was fascinating,” she recalls.

She spent most of her years in public health at the Kingston and St. Andrew Health Department, where she led the response to the large urban outbreak of malaria, 44 years after it was eradicated from Jamaica.

“In my career in public health, I think one of my great work or feeling of satisfaction was when Jamaica, as a country, was able to re-eliminate malaria after the reintroduction in 2006. We were able to document that, and prove that we re-eliminated it and so, we were placed back on the list of countries that have eradicated malaria,” Dr. Webster Kerr shares.

She is highly appreciative of the staff at the National Epidemiology Branch, particularly the persons who go out into the field, and have been “pushing information nationally so that we could do the interventions necessary”.

The work of the Branch extends to investigations and the production of data for non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

“We produced documents and a documentary about the NCD crisis, and it allowed for intervention, which is important,” she tells JIS News.

The team developed the 2024 health status monitoring report, looking at 22 years of data from 2000-2022.

It is the first in a series of annual reports that provide a comprehensive measure and well-being of the population.

More than 100 health indicators were used to highlight where the country is doing well or areas that need improvement, which will be made in evidence-based decision-making.

“Jamaica is really having its own data, not relying on secondary foreign data to make decisions, and we are putting the data in place,” Dr. Webster Kerr says.

Dr. Webster Kerr leads on national health programmes and policies related to epidemiology and research and chairs the Health Thematic Working Group for Jamaica’s National Development Plan: Vision 2030.

She is Principal Investigator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Grant: Surveillance and Response to Avian and Pandemic Influenza in Jamaica; and the Co-Principal Investigator for the Jamaica Health and Lifestyle Survey III 2016/2017.

She also chairs the Essential National Health Research Committee, which focuses on research for development and is currently working to advance the National COVID-19 Research Agenda.