Question

1. How does your community and lived experience influence who you are and how you think about public health? Limit to 250 words

Academic or Personal Challenge *

2. Tell us what you learned from a recent academic or personal challenge and what it means for how you might approach a challenge in the future. Limit to 250 words.

Impact *

3. What is the impact you would like to make and how will the Public Health-Global Health major assist you in that path? Limit to 250 words.

Academic Experience

4. Address any discrepancies in your academic record and reflect on your experience. Limit to 250 words.

Answer 1

Part 1

I am a registered nurse and have been working in a multispeciality hospital for the past 4 years.The reason why I chose this career is because of the influence of the nurses I have come across in this lifetime and their impact on public health.I always wanted to find the purpose of this life and by being a nurse I can assure that I am helping the people around me and thereby contributing to improve the public health of my community.Public health is one of the major sector which provides the person a sense of complete physical,social and mental well being and not merely the absence of diseases or infirmity.I came to realise how much of an effect a health care professional has on the overall public health of a community is through my own community.I live in a small city where people are inhabited densely and overpopulated.Epidemics were a common and serious issue in the area for a long time until government took initiative to set up a municipality health center with trained doctors,nurses,physiotherapists and other technicians.Gradually people started to gain confidence in them and could improve their health,broaden the availability of medical services even to economically unstable people.This had a great impact on the healthy behaviors and habits on individuals,family,professional and even community level.I developed affinity towards the public health even more as I started my career in a small rural area hospital setup where I was posted for two years.As the only health center in the area,I had so many responsibilities including bringing  awareness in many fields like low vaccination rates,drug overdoses,foodborne diseases and prevention of diseases.Along with the Non governmental organisations,the hospital conducted many classes and seminare to the pubic on topics like environmental health,community health,behavioral health,health economics ,health education,mental health,occupational safety and sexual and reproductive health.

Part 2

Few months ago,during the corona pandemic situation intensified in the area where I live, I was told to take a break from the career by family.This was indeed a tough time for me as I knew that it was my time to give it back to the community in every possible way but the risk of getting infected and thereby infecting my children and family members were worrying me.But I took a stong decision to continue my services during the pandemic and made a mental note to take maximum precautions and measures to protect myself and others from infection.I started being extra cautious by educating myself with the correct techniques of PPe kit,mask,gloves,sanisation and even taught other collegues  to follow the same.After 9 months of Covid-19 duty I can proudly say that I helped my society without sparing my own protection.This gives me strength to continue the services in future endavors in public health.

Part 3

There are many unacknowledged complex health crisis in developing countries which reduce the quality of living of the people.I would like to addresss such issues and a major in Public health-global health will lead me in the right direction.Mental health and removing the social stigma related to it ,sexual and reproductive health,distribution of condoms to prevent STDs,suicide prevention by counsellling ,delivery of vaccination to prevent new born and childhood diseases,alcohol,smoking and drug overuse and primarily improving the healthcare accessibilty to each level of community.All these can be only achieved through a combined effort of a disciplinary action from a well educated and trained public health experts.The journey to achieve the complete global health will become more achievable if one has the proper knowledge and expertise in the field of both public health and global health.

Part 4

The initial year of my nursing degree was not easy for me.I wanted to pursue good marks in all the subjects but psychology and sociology subject was something which made it impossible.I recieved low marks in that particular topic for the class tests and internals and because of that my confidence also went down.I decided to understand the concepts and visualise the concepts rather than by hearting the theory which eventually turned out to be a good way of studying.Implementing psychology and sociology in community based rehabilitation is essential and eventhough my marks were not upto the level of my own satisfaction,deeper understanding of most of the learned lessons became helpful during my work period.So this gave me a new insight about a learning technique as well as boost in confidence.