Regional Vice President Spotlight - Caribbean

Trinidadian physician, Asha Pemberton, is the IAAH Regional Vice-President for the Caribbean and the co-chair of the IAAH communications committee. Pemberton, a Paediatrician and Adolescent Medicine Specialist, is a clinician and an Associate Lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Faculty of Medical Sciences. Her passion for medical education has led to her involvement in undergraduate and postgraduate education as well as facilitation of a new program on adolescent health and advocacy. Her particular areas of clinical focus and research include adolescent health education, primary care program development, and adolescent mental health and mindfulness.

Having lived and worked in several territories throughout the English speaking Caribbean, Pemberton has played pivotal roles in the development of adolescent health primary care clinics, and specialist services for cases of sexual violence against children and adolescents in both Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. She has consulted with both PAHO and UNICEF on a variety of adolescent health and violence prevention (specially for young women and girls) projects in the Caribbean region. In 2019, Pemberton served as the Chair of the Planning Committee for the First Caribbean Congress on Adolescent and Youth Health (CCAYH), the inaugural adolescent health congress in the Caribbean Region. She has also been instrumental in the creation of the newly formed Caribbean Association for Adolescent Health, currently serving as the secretary.

Completing her undergraduate and graduate education at the University of the West Indies, Pemberton received clinical fellowship training in adolescent medicine at the University of Toronto/Hospital for Sick Children in 2011. Upon her return to the Caribbean, she has spent the past decade advocating at national and regional levels for the development of comprehensive adolescent health care services. Pemberton has also been vocal at the legislative level supporting policies aimed at removing existing barriers preventing young people in the region from accessing confidential health care services. She was recently nominated to sit on a national committee in Trinidad and Tobago as the adolescent health representative, charged with conceptualizing service reform and policy to support best practices and services for adolescents and young adults within the health care system.

Currently engaged in numerous projects aimed at capacity building and training the healthcare workforce in adolescent friendly health care practices, Pemberton consults with regional colleagues in territories where there is currently no adolescent health expert. She continues to advise various committees and advocacy agencies throughout the region and looks forward to serving on the planning committee for the 2nd Caribbean Congress on Adolescent and Youth Health (2022).

In addition to her clinical, academic, and advocacy roles, Pemberton is an avid writer and contributes to a weekly column in a national newspaper on adolescent wellbeing, mental health and mindfulness, and parenting of teens. She advises on story ideas for the IAAH newsletter and also manages the IAAH social medial accounts.