Intro to Public Health - Blog 9

Hey everyone!

The semester seems to just be flying by. I can’t believe it’s already mid-November. The lecture series of our Intro to Public Health class has already come to an end! It feels like just yesterday when I was writing my first ever blog post! We had our exam on Wednesday and now the rest of the class will be focused around our term papers. In our papers, we will chose a specific issue that interests us and assess the problem and create a practical intervention. Although I really liked the lecture portion of the class and learning about such a large scope of public health information, I’m excited to narrow my focus and apply everything we’ve been learning into my paper.

Throughout the course of the semester, some of my favorite lectures included Public Health Preparedness and Disaster Management, Public Health and the Law and Firearms and the Law. But the topic that was most interesting to me was International Health and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). One of the things that Dr. Mosely touched on in his lecture was how quickly the population is growing and the effect of that. Some of the numbers he was throwing at us were staggering! In Sub-Saharan Africa, the annual number of births has increased/will increase 43% from 1990 to 2015. Only 22% of women are using some sort of contraceptive in this region as well. Unfortunately, this fact is mostly because the women’s husbands want hordes of children. It’s something that, in their culture, gives them status and power even if the women don’t agree. I thought that all MDGs were intriguing but the two that I found most important were to improve maternal health and reduce child mortality (something that was mentioned in the reading for one of our blogs a few weeks back!). It’s vital that these two factors be addressed and dealt with in order to improve international health as a whole.

One of the most surprising aspects of public health is how little its recognized and appreciated. Over the past century, there have been multiple public health victories that have been extremely beneficial to society yet the field still does not get as much credit as it deserves. Some of these include improved motor vehicle safety, safer and healthier foods, immunizations, and better control of infectious diseases. Even still, there is a huge discrepancy between the amount of money spent on biomedical care compared to public health. There is also a considerable amount of controversy surrounding public health, adding to its unpopularity. The issue of individual right versus overall health of the community often comes up. Some people feel that public health policies are stifling their freedom to do certain things but they don’t realize how much they’re actually being helped!

In my first blog, I talked about how I took this class in order to get a broad understanding of public health in general. I feel like I did get that from this class but I think I might enjoy taking a class that’s more specific next semester and learning about various topics more in depth.