Paul Amuna is currently Acting Dean of the School of Public Health, University of Health and Allied Sciences. He is a graduate of the University of Ghana Medical School and the Faculty of Medicine, University of Sheffield. He is a physician scientist, Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and consultant in international nutrition and public health. He was previously Principal Lecturer at the University of Greenwich in the United Kingdom. Until his recent appointment as Dean of the UHAS School of Public Health, he was Subject Matter Expert for Research and faculty member for the Family Medicine and Community Medicine postgraduate Residency Programmes at the Primary Health Care Corporation, Qatar; and Adjunct Associate Professor to the School of Public Health, University of Health & Allied Sciences, Ho, Ghana.

As a pedagogic expert, he has a special interest in educational standards and benchmarks, curriculum design and quality assurance in Higher Education and serves as mentor and trainer in this field. Over the past three decades, he has helped to establish, design, run and evaluate undergraduate and postgraduate academic programmes across a range of subjects in the biological, sports and exercise physiology, nutrition, pharmacy and medical sciences at a number of European and African Universities. He has also led the design of tailor-made Continuing Education programmes for institutions in Europe and Africa. As faculty member for the Postgraduate Family Medicine and the Community Medicine Residency Programmes in Qatar, he supported the development of a research track in academic and clinical training to promote translational medicine in family practice.

He has served as subject-specific external examiner and whole-programme academic institutional reviewer on subjects allied to medicine in the United Kingdom and African Universities; and as PhD External Examiner to a number of leading UK Universities including the Universities of Glasgow, Aberdeen and most recently (2019), the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Paul is a leader in health workforce capacity-building and has led the establishment of scientific professional bodies in the UK and Africa including the African Nutrition Society (ANS). As a medical student fellow at WHO in the late 1980s, he designed the Village Concept Project (VCP) and coordinated its first pilot project at Ojobi in Ghana in 1987. A student-led concept championed by the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA), the VCP provides opportunities for vocational training and field experience in health and development through intersectoral collaboration. To date, the VCP is the most successful international student-led intersectoral health and development project replicated in over 50 countries worldwide.

He established the Research Department at Primary Health Care Corporation, Qatar and until recently, was Subject Matter Expert (Research) (2013-2019). As Research Compliance Specialist and Human Subjects Administrator he established the governance structures for research ethics in primary health care and the Institutional Review Board for the organization. He provided strategic leadership for primary care research, established a thriving staff research training programme, promoted national and international partnerships and collaborative research in Qatar, and the International Primary Health Care Conference in Qatar. He was Vice chair of the institutional Corporate Ethics Committee and served on a number of national committees including the Qatar National Diabetes Technical sub-committee on Diabetes Research and the National Cardiovascular Disease Technical Group.

Paul serves on a number of international boards and committees and has participated on expert scientific panels in Europe, Africa and at the United Nations. He was a Trustee and Chaired the International Affairs Committee of the Nutrition Society, UK and Ireland (2007-2016) and was a Board Member of the Association for Nutrition (AfN), the regulatory body for nutritionists in the UK and Ireland (2007-2013). He is Board Member of the e-Nutrition Academy (eNA), an international multi-technology platform to support nutrition workforce training in developing countries. He is also Advisor to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

Science/Research Output 

Paul’s research interests include links between maternal health and wellbeing and inter-generational risks of chronic disease and the nutrition transition. He has led research in Africa and Asia on maternal nutrition and pregnancy outcomes (South Africa, Nepal).  He has also led research in the Arab Gulf on Diabetes patient education and clinical outcomes (Qatar); risk factors and interventions on childhood obesity (ECHO-zone) in Qatar, food safety and nutrition labelling (Qatar), overweight and obesity in children (Kuwait) and the impact of migration on non-communicable disease risk among South Asians in the UK. He is co-originator of the Food Multimix (FMM) Concept with Professor Francis Zotor, the focus of which is to promote the harnessing the ‘nutrient strengths’ of individual traditional food ingredients to maximise their nutritional benefits to targeted vulnerable groups.

Selected Publications 

• Amuna, P., & Zotor, F. B. (2008). Epidemiological and nutrition transition in developing countries: impact on human health and development. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 67(01), 82-90.
• Zotor, F. B., & Amuna, P. (2008). The food multimix concept: new innovative approach to meeting nutritional challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa. Proc Nutr Soc, 67(1), 98-104. (Read more...)
• Zand, N., Chowdhry, B. Z., Zotor, F. B., Wray, D. S., Amuna, P., & Pullen, F. S. (2011). Essential and trace elements content of commercial infant foods in the UK. Food chemistry, 128(1), 123-128.
• Dei-Tutuwa, D., Amuna, P., & Rahman, M. A. (2014). Rapid Detection of Microbial Contamination in Ghanaian Herbal Medicines by PCR Analysis. Ghana Med J, 48(2), 106-111.
• Aglago, E. K., Landais, E., Zotor, F., Nicolas, G., Gunter, M. J., Amuna, P., & Slimani, N. (2017). Optimising design and cost-effective implementation of future pan-African dietary studies: a review of existing economic integration and nutritional indicators for scenario-based profiling and clustering of countries. Proc Nutr Soc, 1-10. (Read more)
• Elmi, A. A., Bansal, D., Acharya, A., Skariah, S., Dargham, S. R., Abu-Raddad, L. J., Mohamed-Nady N., Amuna P., ... Sultan, A. A. (2017). Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Infection: Molecular Epidemiology, Genotyping, Seroprevalence and Associated Risk Factors among Arab Women in Qatar. PLoS One, 12(1). (Read more...)
• Forsyth S, Calder P, Zotor F, Amuna P, Meyer B and Holub B. Dietary Docosahexaenoic acid and arachidonic acid in early life – what is the best evidence for policymakers? Ann Nutr Metab 2018;72:210-222.
• Laar, A. K., Aryeetey, R. N. O., Annan, R., Aryee, P. A., Amagloh, F. K., Akparibo, R., . . . Zotor, F. B. (2017). Contribution of scaling up nutrition Academic Platforms to nutrition capacity strengthening in Africa: local efforts, continental prospects and challenges. Proc Nutr Soc, 76(4), 524-534. (Read more...)
• Sarkar, S., Ellahi, B., Zotor, F. B., & Amuna, P. (2017). Decreasing Physical Activity Levels across Religious Sikh Male South Asian Migrant Population in Kent, UK:A Public Health Concern. Journal of Health Management, 19(4), 610-624. (Read more...)
• Zotor, F. B., & Amuna, P. (2017). The food multimix concept: harnessing and promoting local composite complementary diets. Proc Nutr Soc, 76(4), 535-542. (Read more...)
• Geissler, C., Amuna, P., Kattelmann, K. K., Zotor, F. B., & Donovan, S. M. (2016). The eNutrition Academy: Supporting a New Generation of Nutritional Scientists around the World. Advances in Nutrition: An International Review Journal, 7(1), 190-198.
• Acharya, O., Zotor, F. B., Chaudhary, P., Amuna, P., & Ellahi, B. (2015). Maternal nutritional status, food intake and pregnancy weight gain in Nepal. Journal of Health Management, 18 (1), 1-12
• Audain, K. A., Zotor, F. B., Amuna, P., & Ellahi, B. (2015). Food supplementation among HIV-infected adults in Sub-Saharan Africa: impact on treatment adherence and weight gain. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 74(04), 517-525