The People's Open Access Education Initiative, abbreviated as Peoples-uni, is a non-profit organisation established in 2007[1] to help build public health capacity in developing countries through low cost online education for health professionals.

Manchester Metropolitan University validated the courses so that students could gain the Master of Public Health (MPH) award there.

Discussion forums are facilitated by expert volunteer tutors, who also mark assignments.

In order to make sure that costs are low enough to be afforded by the target audience in developing countries, Peoples-uni has adopted a social enterprise model where volunteers underpin the educational programme and low fees are charged to cover modest infrastructure costs.

[6] The educational innovation provided by the Peoples-uni has been recognised as having potential to help correct the unequal distribution of the global health workforce.