Personal Statement: A Career In Public Health

Science is a field I am particularly passionate about and am pursuing as a career. This is because I believe the profound knowledge and insights science offers can best equip me to serve others through a career in health care. I came to this conclusion after taking my first college level biology course. For the first time, I became aware of the unimaginable dept and complexity of the world and ignited a burning fire within me to understand it all. As I continued to take additional biology and chemistry courses, I discovered the thrill that comes with deciphering the governing laws of life. This understanding has taken on a greater, personal meaning as I have learned how to apply science to daily life and share its benefits. Moreover, working with various masters of this admirable field has encouraged me to apply my own skills and what I have learned in health care.

During my undergraduate career at Florida A&M University, I discovered the Public Health graduate school program and I knew this would be a perfect way to make health and diseases, infectious and otherwise, fit into my future plans while expanding my horizons. I have the desire to be one of the movers in the healthcare field, finding answers to the never-ending questions as to why certain diseases are prevalent and others are not. I want to be the person that researches, plans, and executes healthcare programs and policies that will ultimately improve the healthcare field in America. I naturally see myself as a leader and I know that the field of Public Health will help me sharpen my skills as well as bring out the leader that I know I am.

I will like to work within a health sector, namely the National Health Service (NHS). The NHS is the biggest publicly funded health service in the world and created for good healthcare to everyone despite wealth. The NHS employs more than 1.5 million people, making it the top five world's largest workforce. England is the biggest part of the system, caters to 54.3 million population and employing around 1.2 million people in England.

After receiving my bachelor's degrees in Public Health and Foreign Language and International Economics, and masters degrees in Epidemiology and International Economics, I plan on serving a minimum of six months with Doctors Without Borders-- a health advocacy organization that deploys doctors to communities with active need. Not only is this how I plan to serve my global community directly, but I also plan on using this international service work to develop my career. After going on to receive a Ph.D. in Epidemiology, I plan on becoming an economic advisor, or occupying a related job in a healthcare agency so that I may lead an initiative in solving the economic woes of African countries to set them up for long-term

My specific career ideas are still a little vague, but, I do know mental health is something that I am going to pursue in one way or another. Mental health has always intrigued me a little because I had an Uncle with schizophrenia, I never met him and my Mom’s family doesn’t really talk about him a whole lot, but I still think about him a lot. I got to see what happened with his family after, but I can’t see how they were before, and I will always wonder about how he might have influenced my life. My interest in mental health became more directed when I took my first psychology class, the introductory psychology class at Montgomery college in the fall of 2014. I really liked it, partially thanks to the teacher I had, but mostly because it gave me a better understanding of what mental health is. The next psychology class I took was on personalities and it confirmed that psychology and mental health are something I truly am passionate about.

A nurse practitioner, is a profession that I have wanted to pursue for many years. The Family Nurse Practitioner program of the County of Los Angeles Department of Health Services and California State University of Los Angeles will provide the advanced level of education I need, to provide evidence based practice care to a wide variety of patients. My goal is to utilize this level of expertise and knowledge to give back to the community especially to the underprivileged inmate population in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department by providing them easy access to high quality, patient centered and cost effective health care.

I feel like being an Health Administrator is the perfect job for me, because of what I've been through so far in my life. Growing up as a kid I enjoyed being athletic and competing against my peers in any sport events. I later on ran track and played basketball throughout my middle school and high school years. I had the opportunity to lead my track team in some events and it brought out a leadership trait I always had. Sadly, my senior years of track, I fell sick and experienced kidney failure and it was a very hard obstacle in my life. I'm Thankful that God pulled me through and showed me how important your health is. Now I eat more healthier and drink more water because of it. With that being said, being a healthcare administrator share everything I enjoy doing. I like to lead and make sure things are moving smoothly. I also enjoy helping people who are sick, nurse back to health

I´ve always thought that I may have a future in medicine, however, it wasn't until recently that I discovered the opportunity to explore my interests further. As a younger kid I dreamt of becoming an equine veterinarian, and while that still has some pull, I've now become more passionate about directly helping people. The Beaverton Health Careers program seems like the right track for me because I will be able to learn more about the side of medicine I already love and new paths as well. Similarly, by pursuing this in high school, it allows me to determine if I really enjoy health careers before deciding on my future college and degree.

My interest in Health Sciences started in 2013, my freshman year at Health Sciences High and Middle College (HSHMC). Prior to high school, I wasn’t sure what my passion is life was and every time someone would ask “What do you want to do when you grow up?” it was followed with a bow of the head and a shoulder shrug. As I moved into high school, I was offered an internship at SHARP Memorial Hospital and I decided that if I wanted to go into healthcare I would only know if I tried. My second internship at SHARP Mary Birch really started my love for health care and was the spark of a future career that I would make me smile when answering the aforementioned question. Health Occupations Students of America: Future Health Professionals has helped me work toward my goal in more ways than one.

Go outside ask any teenager what their greatest accomplishments are and I assure you some will respond with playing for their high school team, winning a championship, or many will not even know what it is. Yes I ran cross country for my sophomore year and had to opportunity to be varsity by junior year, played club and got third place our first year going in, but those are not my greatest achievements. Many teenagers do not have one, not because they do not do anything, but because most high schools do not offer great real life opportunities for their students.

My interest in Public Health materialized after working as an EMT in Manhattan. I have grown accustomed to individual-centric care, as my immediate responsibility must be to my single patient. After just a single summer in a high call volume setting, during which I treated and transported many hundreds of patients, I began to notice patterns of illness. Most notably, I was shocked by the degree to which socioeconomic standing affected the treatment of chronic illness and mental health. When an individual has to rely on emergency services to handle an asthma attack or a psychiatric incident, it represents a failure of the health care system.

I am interested in science that preserves and enhances the community's quality of life through policy reform, technology innovation, research and advocacy. I have recently graduated from Agnes Scott College with a bachelor's degree in Public Health and I am looking forward to a career that works to eliminate health disparities by transforming policy and innovating technology to strategically create social environments where physical and economic conditions allow for enhanced quality of life. My undergraduate curriculum was focused around quantitative research methods, that provided me with a base in utilizing various techniques to measure a population's health, selecting public health measures relevant to the situation, understanding how health data or research can impact policy, collecting data, interpreting as wells analyzing data, determining social determinates of health, and evaluating: burden of disease, epidemiological profile, incidence levels, and prevalence levels within a population. Overall the program prepared me to acknowledge the social and cultural units that configure the world in which I live through inquisitive interaction with social phenomena. I feel that my academic background has made me skilled with the social issues of my time in a way that allows me to not only understand but shape the world in which I live, grow, work,

I have wanted to be a nurse or a teacher for as long as I can recall. However, when I was in high school I felt as if I had a calling to serve in the military. At that time, I was very naïve and did not understand how the military worked, but I knew I wanted to serve. Then, September 11, 2001 happened and I knew what I had to do. That is when I made the decision to become a nurse and serve in the United States Navy.

My interest for public health stems from the need to aid numerous people in disease and injury prevention, health protection, and strategies for health promotion. I hope to earn a Master of Public Health with a focus in the area of health care management as well as hospital administration in relation to public health policy development and education. I aspire to develop enhanced intervention policies that can provide the population with direct access to primary health care due to public health preparedness education and strategic planning.

One of the most appealing aspects of becoming a public health professional is the wide range of careers available to choose from. My career goals coincide with the range of opportunities; however, ultimately I want to work with an organization similar to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. I want to focus on the social and medical aspects of disease, and examine the disproportionate rates of disease and disability among minorities. I also want to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS that is rapidly destroying so many countries. My passion to help others around me has sparked a desire to work with clinics around the world in order to promote change in the treatment and prevention of devastating diseases like HIV/AIDS.