The department of Public Health was established in 2015, combining two pre-existing departments - Health Promotion and Community Medicine. The Department of Public Health now has three divisions: Community Medicine, Preventative Medicine and Health Behaviour, and the division of Health Systems, Policy and Planing. There are five programmes currently offered by the department of Public Health: Community Medicine (as part of the MBCHB programme, from level 1 to level 5), Bachelor of Science in Health Promotion, Postgraduate Diploma in Health Promotion, Master of Science in Health Promotion, and the Master of Public Health. The department received accreditation from the Health Professions Council of South Africa in 2016 to train specialists in Public Health Medicine. This programme will be introduced in 2017.

The department continues to grow and plans to strengthen its programmes by continuously improving on the quality of content delivered, student throughput and research outputs; and through continued community engagement.