Reflection

We just completed our Intro to Public Health midterm and now it is time to reflect on the first portion of the class. As I have previously mentioned, I am not a public health major. In fact, I am a Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering major so I have not taken any classes related to public health. I had a lot to learn on the topic. I was most surprised by the bioterrorism lecture. I would not have previously considered bioterrorism and emergency preparedness to be a public health issue. After the very interesting lecture, it became far clearer that bioterrorism is, in fact, a public health problem. There are different categories of agents in bioterrorist attacks. There are a great number of public health related measures to be taken after an attack. An initial diagnosis must be made (after the incubation period), it must be determined if the disease is communicable from person to person and if post-exposure prophylaxis are available, and then treatment can be provided.

The two topics I found most interesting thus far were injury prevention and obesity. I found the speaker of the injury prevention lecture to be very engaging. Injury is something we usually assume just happens; it's an accident. Which is true, but it is interesting that there is a whole branch within public health that studies ways to reduce injury. I also appreciated that the solution to preventing injury was not simply preventing people to do things that could be dangerous. For instance, an example the lecturer gave was that a school reported significantly lowering playground injuries. The way they were able to do that was by not allowing children on the playground. We were informed that that is not an adequate solution to the problem. It is important to let kids be kids. It is vital in their development. I enjoyed the lecture on obesity because, even though the statistics are astounding, I feel as though it is an area that has a lot of potential for improvement in our lifetime. One point that was emphasized was that there are many reasons for potential weight gain, but it cannot all be attributed to lack of willpower. Fast food is the cheapest and most accessible food, but it is the worst for you. Programs are currently being developed to eliminate fast food in low income areas and provide cheaper healthy alternatives, which is definitely a good start in my opinion.

Since the class began, my views of what public health is, has expanded. Public health is a far broader topic than I initially realized. I would typically associate it with the medical field and the health of the community, but it is truly far more. As I mentioned before, I would have never considered bioterrorism attacks to be a part of public health or even that there is science behind preventing injury. I also found it interesting that we were lectured on health care in the United States, and we were the first class to have an updated lecture due to the reform. Flaws in the health care system that were taught to last semester's class are now being dealt with because of the reform.

I still have the same interests in Public Health that I initially blogged about, but now I can add other areas that I didn't know existed to the list.