Reflection on first half of course

In this blog post, I will be reflecting on the first half of the Intro to Public Health class and my thoughts and impressions so far.

I believe this class has been very interesting so far.  The lectures are enjoyable because they are all taught by various faculty selected from the Bloomberg School of Public Health and they all are very knowledgable about their respective topics.  The online course readings have been entertaining to read and although the textbook may be boring to read sometimes, it still presents some interesting things such as giving case studies and historic examples of public health problems and their respective solutions.  I feel like my knowledge of public health has vastly expanded and I would like to continue to learn more about this broad area of study.

Personally, I found that the area of infectious diseases and bioterrorism were interesting to me.  I feel like these two areas relate to my interest in biology and are topics that combine public health and biology.  I also like history, so learning about the history of infectious diseases and their various historic examples are of particular interest to me.  Bioterrorism is a interesting topic because of the psychological impact it has.  Even though anthrax and other bioterrorism mechanisms have not killed many people, the psychological impact that it penetrates into society is huge.  I would like to take further courses related to infectious diseases and/or bioterrorism later on in my college experience.

To me, the most surprising thing is that chronic diseases are now more pervasive than infectious diseases.  I had no prior knowledge of public health so as a child, I thought that infectious diseases are the most dangerous and probably the most widespread types of diseases in the world in part due to the inherent "danger" in its name.  However, I found out in this course that chronic diseases are actually the most pervasive type of disease and it is also becoming the most widespread disease in developing countries.  It makes sense because as countries develop and industrialize, the risk factors for chronic diseases will increase and risk factors for infectious diseases can be prevented through advanced research on the causes of the infectious diseases.

Initially, I took this class because I wanted to know what public health does and how it relates to medicine.  Throughout my childhood, I witnessed many public health disasters and I wanted to know what public health does in these types of situations and their powers and limitations.  Many things have certainly changed since my first blog post.  Now, I have a general understanding of all the areas of public health.  I know that it covers many more areas of study than I initially thought it did and I now know that public health is intertwined with medicine, law, and politics.  After taking more than two months of this class, I feel like I definitely have more respect for public health because it deals with saving the maximum number of lives as possible and the issues and problems that public health officials face are almost always as difficult if not more difficult than those that doctors face in the field of medicine.  My public health interest has definitely increased as a result of taking this course because I am now aware to the numerous aspects of public health that are available for study.  I definitely plan to take more upper level public health classes and pursue a major in this area of study.