Two University of the West Indies (The UWI) researchers have been named 2026 Yidan Prize laureates for Education Development. Widely regarded as the world’s highest accolade in education, the award recognises over three decades of work that has transformed how we understand and support early childhood development globally.
Professor Susan P. Walker, Emeritus Professor of Nutrition at The UWI’s Caribbean Institute for Health Research (CAIHR), and Dr Susan M. Chang-Lopez, Senior Lecturer at CAIHR, share the 2026 award with long-time collaborator Sally Grantham-McGregor, Emeritus Professor University College London. Professor Grantham-McGregor worked at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) from 1967 and subsequently joined the Tropical Metabolism Research Unit, UWI. She left as professor in 1995. The trio were recognised for creating Reach Up, an evidence-based, scalable, early childhood intervention that has grown from a 1986 research study in Jamaica to a programme reaching hundreds of thousands of children from vulnerable homes across 21 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and is currently scaling to reach 1.5 million in Brazil.
