Qualification Summary: Medical Doctor, Public Health, Health Emergency Management, Programmes, Epidemiologist

Key Words: health emergencies, post-emergency, preparedness, response, HEP, post-emergency health systems, humantiarian emergency, pandemic fund, Epidemiology, public health, Artificial Inteligence (AI), machine learning (basics), health cluster

James Akpablie is a well-rounded public health physician with over 23-year hands-on experience in Public Health programmes, services and systems, more specifically in the domains of public health emergencies, HIV/AIDS/STIs, Malaria, Tuberculosis and similar infectious disease surveillance, control and prevention programmes, including mass vaccination. He has dedicated this work to serving people from low and middle-income countries, mostly serving the underprivileged, especially mothers and children. His most recent work was in humanitarian intervention, leading the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Namibia and the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa, including the post-emergency recovery programme, particularly in building a resilient health system to better respond to future outbreaks. His previous leadership positions include coordinating the UNFPA- Ghana’s response to disasters, and he has played leadership roles and led a broad spectrum of public health interventions where he distinguished himself excellently.  He has an MPH, diplomas in Genitourinary Medicine & Venereology and Reproductive Health, and several certificates among them certificates in Health Systems Through Conflict and Recovery and Impact Evaluation that enhanced his competencies and ability to deliver.

Over the years, he has developed expertise, coordinated and led the implementation of health programmes and projects, in monitoring & evaluation, performance management, and needs assessments, including designing, conducting and evaluating training programmes; situational analysis, operations research, managing teams of programme officers and experts; strategic planning, quality improvement, supportive supervision, health advocacy, policy development and result-based programming. He has a good knowledge of the health systems in Ghana, Sierra Leone, Namibia and generally in Sub-Sahara Africa and has several work experience with donor-funded programmes of the WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF, USAID, DFID, World Bank, Global Fund, etc. and has worked with WHO, UNFPA and international NGOs. 

He developed course materials and facilitated several trainings for health workers, providing his expertise at international conferences and participating as a subject matter expert in the Joint External Evaluation (JEE) of the IHR core capacities mission of the WHO/GHSA partnership where he led the laboratory evaluation.

He has played leading roles in kick-starting a number of projects and has both steered and contributed to the development of a number of national documents in Ghana, Sierra Leone (post-Ebola) and Namibia – policies, strategies, plans, grant proposals, standards, protocols, TORs, briefs, concept notes and reports. He was a part-time lecturer at the University of Cape Coast and once a Board member of MCN Foundation (a USA-based organisation aimed at introducing e-learning projects for health workers in Ghana). He has a personal side-interest in agriculture in efforts to ensure food security in the world and learning more about AI and Machine Learning (ML) and how to apply it in public health.