ABOUT
The Public Health Academy
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The Public Health Academy is a public health consultancy that specialises in the delivery of online and onsite public health training. The courses have been delivered to health department, public health unit and federal government staff across Australia.
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Meet the Founder
Dr Ranil Appuhamy - Founder and Principal Consultant
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Dr. Appuhamy is a highly experienced Public Health Physician with over 20 years of expertise in both clinical and public health medicine. His career spans local, national, and international levels, with significant contributions across various public health disciplines. After completing his medical training in New Zealand, he moved to Australia, where he worked in hospitals across the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, and Victoria. Pursuing his passion for public health, he completed advanced training and obtained a Public Health Fellowship in 2011. Since then, Dr. Appuhamy has made contributions in areas such as communicable disease control, environmental health, health promotion, policy development, tobacco control, and multicultural health. His dedication to public health was recognized in 2014 when he received the ACT Chief Health Officer Award for Excellence and Outstanding Service.
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Dr. Appuhamy has a deep interest in global public health, which led him to complete a Master of International Public Health from the University of Sydney in 2006. He later served as a consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO), focusing on building capacity in member states within the Western Pacific Region for International Health Regulations. Additionally, he has contributed as a volunteer providing aid in Sri Lanka after the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami.
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With extensive experience in communicable disease control, Dr. Appuhamy has led numerous acute response teams, managing a wide range of outbreaks. He has also served as an executive member of the Communicable Disease Network of Australia, the peak public health body for communicable diseases. His research in this field has resulted in numerous scientific publications, and he has played a key role in developing policies, guidelines, and technical documents at state, national, and international levels.
A passionate educator, Dr. Appuhamy is well known for his innovative teaching methods, which make complex concepts accessible to diverse audiences. He has held academic roles at Australia’s leading universities, including as a public health lecturer at the Australian National University and an adjunct senior lecturer at Griffith University’s School of Medicine. He has supervised many trainee public health physicians and is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
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Dr. Appuhamy created a popular YouTube channel on public health, which has over 130,000 subscribers and 10 million video views. His videos have been widely used by health professionals, schools, universities, Non-Governmental Organisations, and the WHO.
In recent years, Dr. Appuhamy has contributed to WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, working with the Learning and Capacity Development Unit on global learning and capacity building, especially during the pandemic and beyond.
Dr. Appuhamy is the founder of the Public Health Academy with a bold vision to make public health education simple, enjoyable, and widely accessible. The Academy has provided training to health professionals across Australia and has developed educational materials for both the WHO and the Australian Commonwealth Department of Health.