Congratulations to Brahm Marjadi on his ANZAHPE Fellowship.

Brahm Marjadi has been a medical and health professional educator since 1996. With a medical and general practice background from Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia, and master’s and doctoral degrees in public health from UNSW, Australia, his teaching portfolio spans medicine, nursing, pharmacy and public health in Indonesia and Australia, from benchtop medical microbiology to the clinical world of healthcare associated infections, from research methods to medical anthropology, and from sexuality education in schools to grassroot community engaged learning. Brahm is also a mixed-methods researcher with expertise in community-engaged learning and diversity, intersectionality, equity and inclusion in medicine, health professional education, and public health.

Brahm decided to apply for ANZAHPE Fellowship after strong encouragement from Dr Jo Bishop FANZAHPE. Brahm likens his journey in medical/health professional education to the character Eklavya from the Mahabharata epic. Like Eklavya, Brahm does not have formal academic training in the form of a med ed PhD. Yet, he developed a strong passion for med ed, since his second year in medical school, and 35 years on he is still as passionate now as he was then. ‘Learning from the sideline’ in med ed as Eklavya did his archery skills, Brahm became the first Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy at the Western Sydney School of Medicine, and the first to get promoted to Associate Professor at Western Sydney University based on his community engaged learning leadership. Brahm sees his ANZAHPE Fellowship as a humbling peer recognition that he has done “something decent in his works”. He hopes to inspire those without formal med ed degrees, and especially those who live with intersecting disadvantages like he does, to excel in health professional education not despite of the barriers but indeed because of them.