With a strong background in public health practice, the Principal Director of the National Family Planning Board (NFPB), Lovette Byfield, was formerly the Director of HIV Prevention responsible for the Management of the Prevention component of the National HIV/STI Programme in Jamaica’s Ministry of Health. Ms. Byfield is a doctoral candidate in Public Health, and an adjunct lecturer in the Doctorate in Public Health programme in the Department of Community Health and Psychiatry, University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona. In addition, she presently works on the CARRTA project as the HIV Prevention Specialist. CARTTA is the Caribbean Regional Training and Technical Assistance project supported by the Pan Caribbean Partnership Against HIV/AIDS (PANCAP) on a grant from the Global Fund for prevention of HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria.

As the Director of HIV Prevention in the National HIV/STI Prevention Program at the Ministry of Health, Jamaica from 2004-2011, Miss Byfield led the development of evidence-based behaviour change interventions for most-at-risk populations including sex workers, men who have sex with men (MSM) and out-of-school youths. She was a co-researcher on the National Knowledge, Attitude, Practice and Behavior (KAPB) surveys and on three consecutive sex worker surveys; she also participated in the design and implementation of the PLACE Randomized Control Trial (2005); served as co-researcher for HIV Prevalence & KAPB surveys among MSM 2008 and 2011; and lead principal researcher on the National Bio-Behavioural Surveillance Survey (2014).

Jamaica, and now the NFPB, have benefitted from her expertise, which she has also shared at numerous international meetings, with her presentations on key topics such as access to HIV/STI treatment and care for MSM, programme planning for MARPs, and MSM empowerment.