Researcher profile

Petal Petersen Williams

Dr Petal Petersen Williams is a public health researcher with over 20 years of experience in the design, implementation, and evaluation of behavioural health interventions. Her research focuses on the intersection of maternal health, substance use, and mental health, particularly among pregnant and parenting women in underserved and vulnerable populations. Dr Petersen Williams holds a PhD in Public Health and Family Medicine and a Master’s degree in Psychological Research from the University of Cape Town. She spent the majority of her career at the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) in the Mental Health, Alcohol, Substance Use and Tobacco Research Unit, where she progressed through the research ranks to Senior Specialist Scientist. During this time, she has been involved in numerous national and international studies on alcohol use in pregnancy, mental health integration in primary care, and health systems strengthening. Her doctoral work, was a first-of-its-kind prevalence study on alcohol and drug use among pregnant women in the Cape Metropole, within the region with the highest global rates of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. She has held principal and co-investigator roles on studies funded by NIH/NIAAA, NIHR, PEPFAR, GLOHRA, SA-NRF and the SAMRC, including behavioural intervention trials such as the Counselling for Alcohol Problems in Pregnancy (CAP-Pre) and Maternal Alcohol Reduction Intervention in South Africa (MaRISA and MaRISA PLUS). She also co-led AVIRT, an alcohol diagnostic validation study prompted by South Africa’s COVID-19 alcohol bans, and contributed to health systems research that directly informed mental health service integration in primary care. Now based in the UK, Dr Petersen Williams is a Research Group Leader and Lecturer at the University of East Anglia, where her research group mainly focuses on perinatal mental health, alcohol and substance use prevention, and health systems strengthening in the UK. She is an honorary Associate Professor at the Institute for Life Course Health Research, Stellenbosch University; an honorary Senior Specialist Scientist at the SAMRC; and a faculty member on the ARISE programme, a multi-partner initiative building African mental health research capacity. Her current work in the UK focuses on developing co-produced, scalable clinical trials for alcohol harm prevention and mental health support during the perinatal period. She is affiliated with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Research (CAMHR) at the University of Hull, and building collaborative networks across academia, the NHS, local authorities, and third-sector organisations. Dr Petersen Williams has authored over 70 peer-reviewed publications, contributed to national policy briefs and guidelines, serves on the editorial board of PlosOne and served as guest editor for a special issue on maternal substance use in Frontiers in Psychiatry. Her career is driven by a commitment to health equity, evidence-informed service innovation, and capacity-building, particularly in maternal behavioural health research.