Natalie Greaves is a Lecturer in public health and Coordinator of the MPhil/PhD program in public health and epidemiology at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus in Barbados. Her work includes teaching theoretical principles in palliative care and research methods at both the postgraduate and post-graduate levels. She is currently on the steering committee of the Caribbean Palliative Care Association and, in December 2021, was appointed as an Honorary Medical Officer of Health for the Ministry of Health and Wellness of Barbados, where her responsibilities include writing cancer screening guidelines for the island.
Dr. Greaves has devoted much of her career advocating for the development of palliative care services and education in the Caribbean. She was consultant for the Barbados Palliative Care Needs Assessment Project – Ministry of Health Barbados and a founding director of the island’s national Palliative Care Association (2011-2012). She was also consultant to the Barbados Hospice Project stakeholder engagement process, and Chair of the National Advisory Committee on Chronic Pain Management with the Ministry of Health Barbados (2011-2018). She was section lead for palliative care in the development of the Barbados National Cancer Control Plan (2015-2018). In 2016, she received a Commitment to Excellence Award granted by the University of Southern Caribbean-Barbados in recognition of her work in palliative care. She launched UWI Cave Hill’s first graduate course in palliative care as well as a massive open online course in palliative care with colleagues from the Caribbean region.
Her research focuses on applied public health, cancer prevention and control, palliative care, health care organization and delivery, and access pathways to care. Her dominant research methodology is qualitative.
Dr. Greaves is an alumna of UWI where, in 2002, she earned her MBBS (bachelor of medicine/bachelor of surgery) and was recipient of the Barbados Medical Practitioner’s Lionel Stuart Award for Excellence in Surgery. In 2005, she received a Barbados National Development Scholarship and a Shakespeare-Day Hospice Research Scholarship, both in palliative care. In 2013, she obtained her PhD in primary health care management (with a focus on palliative care) from Warwick Medical School in the UK, and in 2014 she completed the National Cancer Institute’s Summer Curriculum on cancer prevention and control. In 2019, she completed the Palliative Care Education and Practice Course given by the Centre for Palliative Care, Harvard Medical School.
She has been an IAHPC member since 2020, and joined the IAHPC Board in January 2023.
Dr. Greaves describes herself as an “island girl” through and through who loves walking on the soft white sea sand or just sitting and simply watching the waves roll in.