The Half-way Point

It’s astounding how much was covered in the first half of Intro to Public Health!  We’ve covered the science, the economics, and even the environmental aspects behind public health (and that’s not even the full list.)

The design of the class makes it easy for us to understand this wide variety of topics.  I enjoyed how there were different lectures each class, and each lecture used the textbook for background information.  This combination helped to identify the most pertinent concepts being taught in each topic.  The weekly blog posts are also contributing to my understanding of each topic.  Because the posts require some reflection, concepts are reinforced and applied in sample scenarios.  But of course, it also matters how much I enjoy the topics.

The topics in which I felt most engaged include epidemiology, infectious disease and history of public health.  I enjoyed epidemiology not only because I had background in epi, but also because Dr. Alexander dissected into its definition; that epi is the study of distribution and determinants of disease frequencies was subtly taught to me previously, but not explicitly said.  In the context of this definition, epi began to make more and more sense, and because the strongest/clearest part of public health for me.

Infectious disease was also interesting to me because of the many possibilities for intervention, and because of the recent vaccine-fear issues.  Since vaccination is one method to break the chain of infection, fear about vaccines can undermine the goal of prevention.  To me this was particularly interesting because whereas one might think that an intervention in the chain of infection would be foolproof, human qualities can cause an intervention to fail or be weaker than designed.

I don’t think I ever intended on taking interest in the history of public health, but the lecture surprised and convinced me otherwise.  Public health was described as the “promise of control,” but sometimes public health falls short.  This is where history of public health comes in and investigates to learn from public health’s successes and failures; and to determine how societal and governmental functions can affect public health programs.  I especially enjoyed learning about cholera and how John Snow’s study shifted the paradigm from “treat to prevent.”  In the context of the modern world, I feel that this is important because often we address issues with treatments rather than preventions (take food contamination and swine flu as examples).

My first post described how I wanted “this course [to] change all my preconceptions and inspire me to think cleverly about future public health.”  I feel that so far, it has done so; I got exposed to areas I never even knew were involved in public health (e.g. health services research).  And where I used to think of public health as unnecessarily involving too much politics and economics, I now know that these two areas have significant impact on public health.  I would say that my interests in public health have broadened and now, I can see the relevance of several topics.

I am looking forward to learning more about some specific topics, and slowly narrowing down.

Eric