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The course will be led by Professor Ivan Browne, Director of Public Health at Leicester City Council during the COVID-19 pandemic and Associate Professor Alex Hammant, a specialty registrar in public health medicine.

Ivan Browne OBE - Professor in Public Health

Born in Leicester, Professor Browne is closely linked to this and other local communities. He has worked in public service for over 35 years and was the former Director of Public Health for the City of Leicester and was at the forefront of leading the city through the COVID 19 pandemic. He is currently a Professor in Public Health and the Social Determinants of Health at ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ and a non-executive Director at University Hospitals Leicester

Ivan is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, where he has been awarded with the President’s Medal for his contributions to Public Health. He is an honorary Doctor of Loughborough University and Leicester University, and is a Deputy Lieutenant for Leicester and Leicestershire. He has been previously named as one of the Rising Stars in the Health Service Journals 50 most influential Black, Asian and Ethnic people in health in both 2022 and 2023. He was awarded the National Impact Award, by the nation’s 4 Chief Medical Offices at the 2023. He was awarded an OBE for services to Public Health in the 2025 Honors’ List. He sits on a number of national NHS organisations and boards.

Associate Professor Alex Hammant MBiochem (Oxon) MBChB MPH MFPH PGDip(ClinEd) FHEA - Associate Professor in Public Health

Alex is an experienced lecturer of medicine and public health, undergraduate and postgraduate students. He enjoys using innovative methods in his teaching, including mixing exercise with revision and deliberately stretching students with novel material. Alex has worked as a doctor in the NHS for many years in a variety of different jobs: from psychiatry and GP to urology and geriatrics. He specialised in Public Health medicine and is finishing his specialty training in the East Midlands. Through this training he brings insight from a breadth of jobs: working at Leicester City council; the National Tuberculosis Unit; the UK Health Security Agency; and NHS England Vaccinations and Screening team.

Dr Zaqia Rehman PhD MSc CPsychol Assoc FPH AFHEA - Programme Lead for Master of Public Health (MPH)

Zaqia Rehman is a Senior Lecturer in Critical Health Psychology and the Programme Lead for the Master of Public Health (MPH). Her research includes minority stress and mental illness among minority groups in the UK. Dr Rehman has presented her research on intersectionality and health across Asia, Europe, and the UK, sharing insights into how social and cultural contexts shape health experiences. She enjoys embedding real-world issues into her teaching, encouraging students to think critically about public health practice and policy. She has led international public health engagements, including a student trip to Mallorca exploring health risk behaviours in community settings. Her teaching is grounded in inclusivity. In addition to her teaching role, she is the School Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Lead, where she works to create a more equitable learning and working environment.

The diversity of Leicester makes it a unique public health training location. Leicester had the lowest percentage of people from a white ethnic background of any United Kingdom (UK) city in the 2021 national census (44%), making those who are traditionally thought of as being from “minority” ethnic groups in the UK actually in the majority in Leicester. This represents a fantastic opportunity to use the example of Leicester to learn how to meet a range of public health challenges. These are challenges which, in the future, will also more commonly occur in other places as they begin to reflect the diversity of Leicester.