Futures in Public Health: A King’s Q&A

I am doctor Katrin Augustine, and I am the program director for the online MSc in public health.

I have been at King's, for quite a few years now, and have been working on the online program ever since, two thousand and eighteen.

So I'm really excited to have the opportunity to talk a little bit more about the program.

And we have had lots of students who have graduated our program who either have then started to work in public health, because they have that sort of knowledge, of, as I just said, the key domains of public health and research methods and all of that that has enabled them to do it. We had other students who were already working in a public health sector and either use the, degree and their learnings to get a little transition into more senior roles, for instance.

Or many of our students are actually, also medical.

So our doctors or nurses, well, then with that degree are able to take on some of the leadership roles within their organizations.

We've had quite a few students who have opted in MSCs that they enjoyed studying so much. They went on and did a PhD, in a sort of health related field, and, it's really lovely to see their research output now at this point coming through as well.

So, yes, we both have some students in Edmonton to work either for international organizations or for humanitarian organizations.

So public health is a really broad field, and there are lots of different ways, to apply what you have learned to other you know, if you might feel that you're at a point in your career where you just need to change, there are lots of areas that can be applied to.

In our department, In our department, which is the, Department of Population Health Sciences, we have a wide range of expertise in all of these public health related issues.

So all of the modules actually that you are studying have been designed with, experts in our department, and we are regularly updating those, of course, again, to sort of reflect the change of knowledge, and drawing on our colleagues that we have here in our, school, which, is a huge huge advantage.

So, yeah, we have that expertise in house, to help ensure that you are always up to date with what you're learning about.

I think we are currently at a point in our in the world where things are changing incredibly rapidly.

I've had the impact of globalization, which we've seen for a few decades now, but which still is sort of accelerating and really influencing, public health outcomes. Outcomes. I feel that as a world, you know, sometimes it might not look like it. But overall, we are getting more connected, and there is a what I find quite interesting is that we have much more readiness to learn from each other. And again, this this is what I quite like about this program because students come from very different contexts from from the UK, and there is an opportunity really to learn from each other about, what public health and, you know, around the world looks like and what priorities are.

We have the impact of climate change, which I think is very important to understand, also in in the context of what does that mean for health and for populations, and, potentially emerging diseases and all of that. So it's it is really interesting. And sometimes having all of that knowledge is a way of, of course, helping you to cope with some of the more challenging aspects maybe around how the world is changing.

In terms of study, I do think, you know, you will see much more. And we have actually since particularly since pandemic, seen a real emergence of online programs, not not only in public health, but maybe especially so.

So online study is, becoming more and more common, and people used to think that this was in some way inferior. But that notion doesn't exist anymore at all because we are all, all the time online, aren't we? So it just becomes a much more intuitive way of also doing a degree.