Vonna Drayton Appointed Director of CER

Wilmington, Delaware
Friday, September 26, 2008 @ 11:34 AM EDT
by: Karen Bengston, Public Relations Manager

Newark, Del. - Vonna Lou Caleb Drayton, MA, MPH, DrPH has been appointed Director of the Center for Evaluation and Research (CER) at Nemours Health and Prevention Services.

Dr. Drayton joined Nemours in 2006 as Senior Epidemiologist and had recently assumed the role of Acting Director for CER. A maternal and child health epidemiologist, Dr. Drayton has experience in teaching, research, and management in the Caribbean and the U.S. She served as Lecturer and Assistant Dean at the University of Guyana and Lecturer and Coordinator at the University of Technology in Jamaica prior to accepting the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship at Emory University.

During this fellowship, Dr. Drayton participated in professional development activities at the CDC, The Carter Center’s Task Force for Child Survival and the Pan American Health Organization. She was awarded an Organization of American States Fellowship to continue her studies to the doctoral level at Loma Linda University. There, Dr. Drayton performed a population-based evaluation of a program for preventing repeat pregnancy among teenage mothers. Articles based on the results of this evaluation have been published in peer-reviewed journals.

During her public health career in the United States., Dr. Drayton served as Research Coordinator for the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Information Service at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. She later transferred to the Texas Department of State Health Services, as Manager of the Assessment and Reporting Group of the Division of Family and Community Health Services, with responsibility for reporting and technical support for the Maternal & Child Health Bureau Title V five-year needs assessment and annual grant. Dr. Drayton a is a peer reviewer for the Maternal and Child Health Journal, and holds memberships in the American Public Health Association and the Society for Epidemiologic Research. She earned a BSC (Hons) from Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada; an MA in health management, planning & policy from Leeds University, UK; an MPH in epidemiology from the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA; and a DrPH in international health - maternal/child health epidemiology from Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA.

Nemours Health and Prevention Services (NHPS)
Nemours Health and Prevention Services (NHPS) works with families and community partners to help children grow up healthy. Our goal is to drive long-term changes in polices and practices that promote child health and to leverage community strengths and resources to have the greatest impact on the most children. One of our initial areas of emphasis is childhood obesity prevention through the promotion of healthy lifestyles, the center piece of which is The Campaign to Make Delaware’s Kids the Healthiest in the Nation.

NHPS is a division of Nemours, one of the nation’s largest pediatric health system operating the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, and outpatient facilities throughout Delaware, the greater Delaware Valley, and northern and central Florida. NHPS expands Nemours’ reach beyond clinical care to consider the health of the whole child within his or her family and community.

modified: Friday, September 26, 2008 @ 12:23 PM EDT
created: Friday, September 26, 2008 @ 11:34 AM EDT