Hello, welcome to Flinders University. My name's
Fran Baum and I'm the Matthew Flinders
Distinguished Professor of Public Health. Public Health at Flinders University is
a very broad discipline, we've got people who bring perspectives
from epidemiology, from medicine, from nursing, from
anthropology, sociology, psychology and all of us are
working to consider the question of how can we make society healthier,
how can we make communities healthier and how can we make individuals
healthier. When you look at the tip of the iceberg
in public health, you're seeing the individual who
maybe has a disease and medicine has a real role in treating those individuals
when they're sick and public health is really looking at the
bottom of the iceberg and saying well what's driving that sickness?
We attract people from a whole range of disciplines; people who have studied
statistics, who have studied mathematics might be very good at being an
epidemiologist, people who come from a health
professional background such as medicine, nursing, physiotherapist, speech pathology,
occupational therapists. If they come in to do a Masters of
Public Health it's very often you find when you
talk to them they've got frustrated by always just
treating people who have got sick and they say what I'd really like to do is help
people stay healthy and work out how we might do that.
And then there's people who perhaps come in from a social science background who
have really good skills at conducting research doing for
instance, qualitative research, where they might
really look at the lived experience of people in their communities
and why that enables them to be healthy or not. So it is a very very broad
discipline and I think its real strength is that it is genuinely
multidisciplinary. Flinders is just about to start a course
for people coming in to do their first degree; a
Bachelor of Public Health and then we also offer a Masters of
Public Health and you can also do a PhD in the area of public health.
But thinking of that bachelor degree that would give you skills
in epidemiology, in how you can study the distribution of diseases, you'll also
learn how to do qualitative research, you'll learn about
different comparisons of public health policy,
how you would deal with an epidemic like COVID, how you
would deal with tobacco control, how can we control
the use of alcohol. So you'll learn all sorts of skills
that will enable communities and countries to stay healthy.
So for instance in most cities we'll find that the areas that are
lower socioeconomic status will also experience more health problems. So
you'll learn the skills of how do we map that,
how do we determine what's driving the ill health
and then going on to the question of how do we design programs
that will address some of those issues. Flinders University has just been
designated as a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on the
social, political and commercial determinants of
health and I'm director of that new centre
so that's very exciting for us and it means that we have a direct link with
our colleagues in WHO, which is going to be great for
finding student placements, for finding opportunities for research projects.
So that's going to open a whole lot of new opportunities I think for us in the
coming years and also of course jobs for people who
have qualifications in public health. The other thing about either a Bachelor
of Public Health or a Masters of Public Health
is it's one of those qualifications that's recognised around the world.
So you can find just about every country you'll go to,
whether you want to work in WHO, in an international agency or work in the
health department of another country, an MPH would be a very standard
qualification for you to have. Thinking of Public Health at Flinders,
it's going to give you so many opportunities to follow your
passion. If your passion is about helping people,
building stronger and healthier communities,
building more sustainable communities, then
you will find so much opportunity at Flinders to do that
and what you'll be able to do at Flinders is talk with
people who have spent their careers in public health,
you're able to get that insight at Flinders.
So thank you very much for visiting Flinders University and we really look
forward to welcoming you on campus in the not too distant future.