The course at the London School is unique because of the breadth of
students coming from all over the world and the range of experience they bring to it.
The teaching modules are
very diverse, it gives people a very strong grounding
while allowing them to look at their own specialist interests in some depth.
The first term gives a very broad grounding that everybody gets, in health economics
and basic statistics, epidemiology and social research,
after that students can specialize in one of six streams,
so they get a MSc with a very strong flavor of a particular stream,
for example health promotion
or health service management or research.
And within those streams they also get more opportunity to look at
individual topics as well.
With the streams that the students are able to take, you don't need to select that
before you apply for the course. Some students do,
but even if you do apply with a particular stream in mind,
once you arrive at the school and you see the modules in the other streams on
offer
and the style of the teaching, you can change your mind and opt into a
different stream.
And your final stream choice has to be made towards the end of the first term
usually in late November.
I chose to take the general stream as it was strongly
recommended to me as a part of my studies in Portugal as a medical resident in public health.
It is the one that prepares you best for the challenges you have to take
as a professional in the future
but after being here and studying it I think I would have
chosen it anyway because it gives me a broader perspective of
what public health can be like.
In my case I went on to do the health services management stream,
and so in order to take that stream I had to select certain courses in that
term one
that would set me up for. So I went into health services
and I also took an elective course in environmental health.
In the course of term 2, you are also working towards preparing your
project report
which is a three-month independent piece of research
that you do as kind of the capstone for the degree.
I love being a course director for Public Health.
It puts me in touch
with lots of very enthusiastic people with a huge amount of knowledge and skill
who are committed to improving global health.
So I love it because I learn as much as I get to teach.
The staff at the School are very pleased to talk to the students
and are very approachable if the student wants to talk about their
own particular
research that they're interested or the research that the academics
are doing themselves. We also have a range
of seminars outside of the main lectures
for example, one evening a week, we have a global health
lecture series and we'll also have researchers coming from
all over the world to present their research in
public seminars at lunchtimes or in the evenings.
The teachers are very engaged in what they are doing
beyond class. During class, of course, the
the relationship is very close and it's very good, but also
I think what was very important, was what was going beyond class,
so having the feeling that while I'm back home studying,
I can always email my teacher and I'm going to get an answer on the same day
about my questions or about anything else.
I think the teaching at the School is really good because
there are lecturers who have a really great reputation
you get to see them in their
element when they''re teaching to a huge group of people and
sharing their expertise, but then you've got the smaller seminar groups
where you can talk to people on a
more one to one basis and ask specific questions to clarify things.
There was a very nice feel that the teachers were working in collaboration
with you rather than
just telling you what to do,
and they respected people's backgrounds and expertise in seminars especially.
I think the London School has one of the best
environments for teachers and students to work together
in the sense that lot in my class' students
openly speak out against ideas or concepts presented by professors
if they disagree with them. And in a way it really opens up a great dialogue.
The summer process is a an important element of the course.
It's an integrating module within the course or integrating element,
that enables the student to draw on both their prior experience
but particularly all of the study that they have done
across the Masters and to include all of those in
an integrating project of 8,000 words
to demonstrate what they've learned, apply that knowledge to a particular
situation and undertake a piece independent research.
My summer project was on access to sexual health services for
trafficked women in the UK, and that
mainly started of with a literature review,
but also some transcripts of qualitative interviews,
so I think I got a good mix of different methods of research, which has
actually proved quite useful since then.
My summer project will be about analyzing secondary data
so I'll be doing it with Professor Martin McKee as a supervisor
and I'll be looking at the impact of the financial crisis in the UK in the
purchase of unhealthy foods and also alcohol.
Public health is about people
it's not just about diseases and
we require a very wide, diverse group of people
to deal with the problems of public health.
Since leaving the school I have got
a job as a Policy Adviser at Cancer Research UK
and I used my experience during the Masters
to talk about health policy and research,
both of those have been incredibly useful in my new job.
I think I definitely made the right choice in coming here.
I'm strongly considering coming back to the School
to do a PhD in two years, because the experience here
during the Master's was amazing.
I would absolutely recommend this course other people.
I've met people from all over the world,
professors that have applied experience in the field
and it's just a great learning environment all around.
It just feels professional which is great for an academic institution.