Centre activities
Three pillars
In it's first ten-year phase, the centre's activites will focus on three pillars.
Pillar 1: The chronic disease pandemic
The public health crisis in the Caribbean, particularly the chronic disease pandemic, with special focus on identifying research-based solutions to reduce the burden of Type 2 diabetes and its complications such as diabetic foot amputation.
The region has the world’s highest per capita amputation rates. There will also be a focus on other chronic diseases including mental illnesses, heart disease, hypertension, cerebrovascular disease and cancers affecting in particular women and children. It will support work that carefully considers health disparities within the broader social context including their social and genetic determinants.
Pillar 2: Economic growth development policies
The search for post-plantation economy development policies that are innovative and progressive in the struggle for economic growth in the global economy.
It was noted that economic practices and policy in the region are conservative and technologically transformative; effectively sustaining persistent poverty and growing inequality and designed to meet the specific needs of IMF conditionalities rather than focusing on economic diversification, racial inclusion, gender empowerment. Devising a new set of economic tools and thought specifically for the post-colonial Caribbean is, therefore, a top priority.
Pillar 3: Tackling the cultural divide between Africa and the Caribbean
Recognising that slavery and colonialism drove deep wedges between Africa and its Caribbean family, strategies for project implementation to tackle the day-to-day cultural divide between Africa and the Caribbean are to be funded. Innovative projects to practically integrate and socially domesticate this bond are to be prioritised.