We conduct research, education, capacity building and policy support in pharmaceutical public health (PPH), an emerging field in global health that aims at analysing and strengthening the pharmaceutical systems.

Our research and capacity building activities are built around the broad theme of access to quality-assured health products, with particular focus on:

• resource-limited settings and fragile health systems, including conflict and migration settings
• pharmaceutical regulation and pharmacovigilance
• quality assurance in supply chains
• regulatory and ethics oversight of pharmaceutical R&D

We lecture at various academic courses at and outside of ITM, and since 2021 we organise a three-week short course on Pharmaceutical Policies in Health Systems. The course counts a diverse and multidisciplinary teaching faculty. It is co-led by colleagues of the School of Public Health of the University of the Western Cape, in South Africa, with which we have a solid institutional partnership.

Tom Smekens is the departmental statistician within the Department of Public Health.