WSU DOCTOR AMONG TOP BRIGHT YOUNG SOUTH AFRICANS

Dr Olanrewaju Oladimeji of WSU’s faculty of health sciences has earned himself top honours as the university’s first academic to be elected amongst 10 bright young South Africans in academia by the South African Young Academy of Science (SAYAS).

Dr Olanrewaju Oladimeji is an epidemiologist within WSU’s department of public health, whose expertise in TB / HIV research have involved him in the implementation of large surveys in Sub-Saharan Africa countries.

Oladimeji graduated from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and subsequently completed his Ph.D in Public Health Medicine at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, USA.

He received a prestigious Fogarty Global Health Award from Fogarty International Centre / National Institute of Health for his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, USA, in 2019.

His current h-index is 27 and i10-index is 37 (Google Scholar). He serves on the Editorial Board of several journals, including PLoS ONE and Biomedical Central journals. He has adjunct affiliations with several Universities and serves in various academic committees. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health (RSPH), a Fellow of the African Scientific Institute (ASI), a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the America Public Health Association (APHA), and the America Thoracic Society (ATS).

The WSU Faculty of Health Sciences has its headquarters at Mthatha Campus but has an academic health service complex that spreads throughout the Eastern Cape Province including Mthatha, East London Hospital, Port Elizabeth, with approximately 15 district hospitals mainly in the North Eastern Region of the Eastern Cape and seven community health centres.

The teaching platform is further enhanced by the establishment of Health Resource Centres at Mthatha, East London, Port Elizabeth and Queenstown. The Faculty has three areas of specialisation: – Medicine – Nursing – Allied Health Professions

The research niche areas are: Basic Sciences: Human Nutrition, Medicinal Plants & Traditional Medicine Clinical Sciences: Clinical Epidemiology, Chronic Diseases including Tuberculosis, Asthma, Cardiac Diseases, HIV & AIDS from Health Promotion and Prevention including HIV Vaccine Testing to Monitoring and Evaluation of HIV & AIDS Management including ARVs Public Health: The Burden of Disease, Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Health Systems Research, Health Informatics

Medical Education: Problem-based Education, Community-based Education, Service-Learning.

by Sinawo Hermans