My life at the University of the West of Scotland, United Kingdom

The concept of Public Health has always intrigued me as a medical practitioner hailing from the world’s largest and most rapidly developing nation. The epidemiology of communicable and non-communicable diseases fascinated me as a student during my third year of MBBS. Additionally, during my internship days and as a private medical practitioner, I always felt the need to explain different preventive and social lifestyle changes before prescribing the treatment to my patients. Therefore, I wanted to pursue Master of Public Health (MPH) to give back more to the communities and vastly understand the global impact of different public health challenges worldwide through the right mastery of the subject.

Additionally, the role of Public Health has immensely increased during the pandemic and has urged us to imbibe the right protocols to alleviate the crisis. Even though the course was offered in India, the scope for public health is limited as it is still in its initial stages of development. So, I aspired to move abroad to study more about Public Health.

To pursue MPH, I researched the various universities around the world that cater to my ambition. After thorough research, I found some best and most affordable universities in Scotland that were offering a one-year course. From my friends who were already settled in Scotland, I inferred that this country was extremely developed in the field of Public Health and a booming educational hub for many international students who lived in harmony and achieved their goals. After extensively exploring I found that the University of the West of Scotland, one of the best in the country was offering the course. The university has four campuses in Scotland (Ayr, Lanarkshire, Paisley, and Dumfries) and one in London. The university offers a range of courses like business studies, health sciences, filmmaking, and media and sports coaching. It also offers Ph.D. programs in different fields.

UWS welcomes hundreds of international students from more than 70 countries a year and they have a diverse community. UWS has won many accolades recently.

The university was ranked in the world’s top 150 young (less than 50 years) universities by the Times Higher Education Young University Rankings 2022. It was estimated by the Research Excellence Framework 2021, that 90% of the research conducted by UWS is recognized as world-class. Additionally, UWS has also been recognized by Times Higher Education as one of the most impactful Scottish universities in terms of inequality reduction and economic growth.

Master of Public Health is taught at the School of Health and Life Sciences, UWS Lanarkshire campus located in the beautiful town of Hamilton, Scotland. The campus is built on one of Scotland’s most successful business parks, Hamilton Technology Park. This UWS campus is one of the greenest educational hubs in the UK. The campus has the most modern technology for teaching students such as well-equipped classrooms, device charging points, and campus-wide Wi-Fi. It possesses extensive research facilities, an auditorium with a capacity for more than 200 guests, a conference room with a capacity for more than 100 guests, and an executive board room. Additionally, the campus has social spaces and cafes for us to interact with each other after our classes.

The UWS campus also has state-of-the-art Nursing and Midwifery simulation centers which help the upcoming nursing graduates to come out with flying colors.

The UWS library is world-class and up-to-date with all the recent research done in respective fields and equipped with ultra-modern study spaces. The library comes with highly qualified librarians ready to guide us with our research projects and referencing techniques.

The campus has a Students’ Union which is a place for us to make friends and socialize on different topics such as social affairs, career prospects, and housing matters. Recently, the UWS students’ Union also won the Students’ Association of the year in the National Union of Students Scotland awards 2022.

UWS has student-friendly and highly qualified professors ready to guide us on our new career journey, especially in Public Health. The classes are extremely interactive with seminars, debates, and poster presentations.

The MPH course comprises three semesters and 8 modules, each with a meaningful purpose and each with designated professors.

The first semester covers four core modules such as health economics, postgraduate research methods, effects of lifestyle on health, and responding to public health challenges.

Health Economics teaches us the difference among healthcare systems across the globe and their impact on the economy and health of communities.

Postgraduate research methods teach us the importance of research and the correct steps in conducting ideal and successful research. The effects of lifestyle on health is a very familiar topic for medical practitioners as it explains the importance of exercise, diet and nutrition, and substance abuse. Responding to public health challenges explains the different challenges and methods that can be employed to reduce crises that are faced in the public health sector.

The second semester covers three modules such as eHealth applications, infectious diseases, and biostatistics. eHealth application is a new module, and it explains how electronic health has evolved over the years and the importance of telecommunication among medical professionals. Prevention of infectious disease is again quite a familiar topic to doctors and very similar to community medicine.

The epidemiology of various infections and their vaccinations are taught in this module by clinical scientists.

Biostatistics is a very detailed subject and guides us on how to use the SPSS software for our research projects. The final semester is the postgraduate dissertation which carries the highest credit.

UWS offers us different topics from which we can choose. However, we are also given the option to choose our own topic and we are provided with suitable supervisors to mentor us.

After studying each module, I grasped that Public Health is not just the prevention of diseases but is the cumulative effect of medicine, economics, philosophy, research, and statistics, and therefore studying at UWS has provided me with a new concept about public health.