World Health Organization Violence and Injury Prevention, Geneva, Switzerland
Dr. Peden was educated at the Universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch in South Africa, her native country. She holds degrees in nursing and epidemiology. She obtained her PhD from the University of Cape Town in 1997. Prior to commencing work at WHO in September 2000, she was a senior scientist at the Medical Research Council in Cape Town for 7 years where she was involved with the development of an injury surveillance system for the country. She has extensive experience in road safety, and child and alcohol-related injuries.
Dr. Peden is the Coordinator of the Unintentional Injury Prevention Team (UIP) within the Department of Violence and Injury Prevention and Disability (VIP). She co-ordinates work in the areas of unintentional injury prevention (focused mainly on road safety), injury surveillance/surveys and alcohol-related injuries. She was the executive editor of both the World report on road traffic injury prevention, which was launched on World Health Day 2004, and the World report on child injury prevention released in VietNam in December 2008. She is the global coordinator of the Road Safety in 10 Countries (RS10) project funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies.