World Vision’s Global Health & Nutrition Chief wins child survival award
Tom Davis, World Vision’s Global Leader for Health, Nutrition and WASH, has won an award recognising his decades of work to keep the world’s most vulnerable children alive and healthy.
The Dory Storms Child Survival Recognition Award is presented annually by CORE Group to "a person(s) recognised for exceptional efforts resulting in more effective child survival program implementation and increased impact in improving the health of the poorest of the poor including mothers, children and infants in underserved communities throughout the world."
In his nomination letter, Dr. Henry Perry, Senior Scientist at Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, said that Mr. Davis' achievements were "legion." “Tom has more than three decades of experience implementing and supporting community-based programs of 34 organisations in underserved communities in 27 countries of Latin America, Africa and Asia. He led the implementation of a USAID-supported Child Survival project, which reached more than 1 million people in Mozambique with extraordinary results; has been a true champion of the Care Group approach, sharing the methodology and its advantages to other NGOs and working with them and the CORE Group to promote its use by NGOs throughout the world; and is the original developer of the Barrier Analysis behavioural research methodology, used now by programmes throughout the world to tailor behaviour change messages and activities to achieve optimal effectiveness.
“Tom is also a skilled trainer and has led or facilitated numerous workshops and trainings for programs and program leaders for effective child survival program implementation in underserved communities around the world. ... Tom has provided programmatic leadership and has been a dynamic force for obtaining grants for numerous organisations throughout his career. He has been a mentor to dozens of programme managers, and he has authored or co-authored 15 publications, including six peer-reviewed articles. The inspiration, leadership, and programmatic expertise he has given throughout his career are truly exceptional.”
Mr Davis, who, since December, has led World Vision’s $387m Health, Nutrition and WASH programming portfolio, has been a long-time supporter of CORE Group serving on their Board of Directors from 2003 to 2010 and its Chairman from 2005 to 2010. He was also a member of the Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group, the Quality Improvement Working Group, and the Social and Behaviour Change Working Group (since 2003).
Responding to the announcement of the award, Mr Davis said, “Together with my colleagues at World Vision, member organisations of the CORE Group, and other partners globally, we celebrate that we have cut in half the number of children dying needlessly since 1990, saving about 100 million children's lives. Now we need to help children to not only survive, but to thrive and have transformed lives, as well. I am ready for a new chapter where we will end all forms of violence against children and support their nurturing care while we continue towards our goal of zero preventable child deaths.”
Mr Davis was also the recipient of the 2012 American Public Health Association’s Gordon Wyon Award for Excellence in Community-oriented Public Health, Epidemiology and Practice.
He will collect his award at the June CORE Group Global Health Practitioner conference in the US in early June.
For more information or an interview with Tom Davis contact Jan Butter on 07889400889 or jan_butter@wvi.org