Hello, my name is Maurice Dunn and this blog serves the function of me communicating with my fellow classmates in Intro to Public Health. It also enables us to share our views on certain public health issues and how we feel about the class.
I am interested in public health because I believe it is our duty as humans to help any and every one we can and by working on health policies, gathering statistics, and education we can do that. My goal is to combine public health and medicine and become a pediatric oncologist but I am not sure as of yet what field of public health I want to work in. I decided to take this course because it was recommended to me by my academic advisor and upperclassmen that have previously taken this course and enjoyed it. I was told that it will help me know if I want to continue my studies in public health.
According to the CDC public health is “To promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability.” People in the public health field try to prevent health disasters like epidemics and think of health in a holistic way. The goal of public health is to create conditions where all the people can live healthy. Public health works to prevent diseases before they occur. It has increased life expectancy and decreased infant mortality. Public health strives to treat the community as its patients and to promote healthy habits.
My interest in public health is just to help people as much as I can. I definitely want to work with communities abroad maybe in Africa or South America. I want everyone to be able to have equal health opportunities. I want to spread the ideas of education and prevention.
The first few days of classes have been a shock to me. There has been a lot of information on public health given to us. I am grateful to have enrolled and this class and learning about the different sectors of public health. I like that we talked, in one of the earlier classes, about when public health was “started.” Listening to the lectures and the reading this book has raised my interest in public health that I did not expect before this class. Coming into this class not knowing much about public health was good because I get to hear the information from the people in the field. I did not know that this class was going to be taught by people from the school of public health but I cannot think of anyone else who would be better to do it and I am glad to be a part of this class.
I think it is great that you are interested in public health for the sole purpose of helping people, study abroad sounds very interesting and is a very good way to get experience in this field. My cousin who is in the public health field just returned from a semester in Africa and said it was an amazing opportunity to gain knowledge and hands on experience, helping others and learning of the public health needs around the world. She strongly recommended me to look into study abroad so it is great that you already plan on doing this. I also came into this class with a limited knowledge on public health and so far I could not agree with you more, I have learned a lot of things I was not expecting to hear and have become more grateful for simple everyday things like clean water that I had looked passed before.
ReplyDeleteHey Maurice. Thanks for your comment on my blog! I appreciate your commendable purposes for your study of public health and think it's interesting that we share the same interest of studying abroad/working abroad/traveling in general.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that definition from the CDC! I hadn't looked at their definition before and find it pretty helpful.
I also agree with you about the need for everyone to have equal access to health care. Hopefully we can see avenues for this to be possible through out study in Intro to Public Health class.
I look forward to our future correspondences!
Maurice I'm glad you are interested in the topic and there is so much to learn here.
ReplyDeleteI came to preventive medicine and public health after practicing in the US Navy as a diving and undersea medical officer. The concept of prevention is very appealing to me as it often takes more resources to solve a problem than it does to prevent one. Also I feel that many of the chronic disease that people struggle with today are driven by poor lifestyle choices and could be prevented. Studying how people and populations change is of key interest to me.