A small island with a real research institute and a Mount Sinai partnership.

Why Grenada

Grenada punches far above its 117,000 population. It has a standing research foundation on the St George's University campus, a documented national cardiovascular cohort recruited from the electoral roll, and a 250-bed teaching and research hospital under construction with Mount Sinai Health System. For early-phase and proof-of-concept work in a contained, well-characterised population, it is the strongest of the Eastern Caribbean territories.

The disease burden

Grenada's hypertension burden is the second highest in the network at 46.6%, and control is among the worst at 19.0% — four in five hypertensive adults are uncontrolled. NCDs account for 84.2% of all deaths.

Sites and infrastructure

• General Hospital, St George's — approximately 198 beds
• Project Polaris — a 250-bed teaching and research hospital on an 84-acre medical-city site, developed with Mount Sinai Health System; agreement signed May 2025, groundbreaking 2026
• St George's University School of Medicine, True Blue — a large international medical university
• WINDREF (Windward Islands Research and Education Foundation), founded 1994 — a standing research institute on the SGU campus with DNA sequencing capability used for national COVID variant identification

Research heritage

The Grenada Heart Project — a population-based cardiovascular risk cohort of 2,827 adults randomly selected from the national electronic voter list, led by Valentin Fuster's group with Mount Sinai, with a follow-on randomised lifestyle trial (GHP-CHANGE). Recruiting a national random sample from an electoral roll is something you can do on an island of 117,000 and effectively nowhere else. Plus WINDREF as a continuously operating research institution since 1994.

Regulatory & ethics

• No named national medicines regulatory authority; Grenada relies on CARPHA's Caribbean Regulatory System for medicines assessment
• Ethics review through the WINDREF / St George's University IRB, which operates to US 45 CFR 46

The honest position: This is the honest weakness. Grenada has real research capability but it is institutional rather than national — there is no national medicines regulator, no national ethics committee and no clinical trial authorisation statute, so regulatory standing rests on a private university's IRB operating to US federal standards. For many sponsors that is workable and familiar. For others it is not. We establish the position in writing before any protocol is committed.

Data quality: Moderate to strong — the only Eastern Caribbean territory with a documented national population cohort and a functioning research institute.

How this site fits the network

Core network site — strong population proposition with a functioning ethics route; research infrastructure developing.

Our Grenada operation is contracted, trained and monitored under the same quality system as our UK and US sites. One master service agreement covers all three regions, one budget negotiation, one set of payment terms. Sites in this network can absorb enrolment from under-recruiting UK or US centres without a new vendor qualification cycle.