Maria du Toit completed her PhD in 2020 through the Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, University of Pretoria. She received a postdoctoral fellowship from the University of Pretoria in 2022. She is a qualified speech-language therapist working in the academic sector, as clinical lecturer and research supervisor, and in a practice serving low-income families.
Identification of developmental delays in young children, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, is a major global health challenge. It severely hinders progress towards the fourth Sustainable Development Goal of quality education for all. Maria’s research utilizes innovative technology to make urgently needed decentralized screening possible in communities. Her postdoctoral research builds on her PhD research, by facilitating contextually relevant developmental screening, using mobile health (mHealth) technologies, through local community care workers and early childhood development (ECD) educators. Her focus is on the validation of an mHealth-based developmental screening tool that has been adapted for contextual and linguistic relevance.
Her main goal is to make developmental screening universally accessible to all community stakeholders working with young children, especially caregivers and ECD educators, to facilitate developmental screening and surveillance and, ultimately, developmental literacy within communities. To help achieve this goal, Maria and her research team have partnered with Kenyatta University to adapt and implement decentralized mHealth-based developmental screening in other low-income African communities.
Maria is described as a highly motivated young academic who enthusiastically pursues the highest standards of work with greatest integrity.
