Margie Peden

Margie's work focuses on how to prevent unintentional injuries, particularly in resource-strapped countries.

While road injuries are the biggest issue, Margie's work also canvases other significant problems of drowning, burns and falls, and identifies interventions that could save lives. Her research looks at what works, specifically in developing countries. It will provide evidence on how to prevent injuries before they happen. But it will also hope to look at the post-crash phase, working with nurses – who are the mainstay of healthcare provision in developing countries – to provide optimum treatment management. In some developing countries, traumatic injuries account for up to 70%-80% of the caseloads in emergency rooms. If you can stop these injuries upstream, there are enormous gains for healthcare systems, both financially and in terms of workforce needs.

Representing The George Institute for Global Health and South Africa, Margie is a member of the Commonwealth Road Safety Initiative Expert Panel and together with colleagues from Kenya and Canada leads the data analysis for the reports being developed ahead of the 3rd Ministerial level meeting in Sweden in February 2020 and the CHOG meeting in Rwanda. She is also a member of the Academic Expert Group for this Ministerial meeting, a group responsible for making an independent and scientific assessment of the progress made during the Decade of Action for Road Safety. This report is now available here. The Academic Expert Group will also recommend a road safety strategy for the period 2020-2030. Margie is also Chair of the Global Advisory Board for the Malawi Road Safety Research and Implementation Unit at the University of Malawi.

Prior to working at The George Institute, she was a nurse and an epidemiologist. She worked in a hospital in Cape Town, South Africa for many years before moving to the National Trauma Research Programme at the South African Medical Research Council. After that she was at the World Health Organization for 17 years, coordinating the Unintentional Injury Prevention unit.