Russell Rensburg is a health activist working towards equitable access to quality health care for rural communities and serves as the current RHAP director. He has over 15 years' experience working on strengthening health systems, with 8 of those spent managing technical assistance in Eastern Africa and South Africa. He has a strong interest in strengthening the responsiveness of public finance allocation and governance processes towards advancing the fulfillment the right to healthcare to rural communities.

He has served as a commissioner on the South Africa Lancet Commission for quality health systems as well on the ministerial task team tasked with the development of the National Human Resources for Health Strategy. He is a founding member of the Budget Justice Coalition and a member of the advisory panel of the Public Economics project at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies @WITS