Daniel Demant, Senior Lecturer, School of Public Health: The Bachelor of Public Health at UTS is a three year full time undergrad degree for students who are interested in health and particularly in the non-clinical side of health. Public health overall is an area that takes care of whole populations as well as groups of people rather than taking care of the health of individuals. All of our majors are based on the specific professional area of public health.
Students can specialise in making sure that they are prepared for the workforce later on. Our course prepares students for the workforce through work integrated learning within our subjects, where we have industry leaders coming into our subjects and teaching the students real world examples.
Bernard Saliba, Lecturer, School of Public Health: The Bachelor of Public Health at UTS is really designed to equip students with a comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced by communities when it comes to public health and population health. And the degree really equips them for being able to face these challenges in whatever avenue they choose to go down when it comes to their careers.
Daniel Demant: All of our students are undergoing a 140 hour placement with an industry body where they can learn hands on work and take that back to a university and apply that to all of our subjects and to the rest of their learning.
Charles (Student): So I'm passionate about health promotion for my placement. I've been working on a health promotion project with Health Justice Australia, working with parents of children with disabilities. I'm passionate about helping people and having something tangible that I can put my name on, like a nice project that I've worked on that's going to make a difference in a community.
Daniel Demant: We are one of the very few universities in Australia to offer a dedicated major in Indigenous health and wellbeing as part of our undergraduate degree. Students who undertake this degree have a great future in going into the workforce, working with Indigenous health organisations or with non-Indigenous health organisations helping Indigenous clients.
Jacintha (Student): Indigenous health is important for the Bachelor of Public Health because of the disparities of Indigenous people within Australia, and we teach about the ways of Indigenous knowledge, ways of being, knowing and doing and bringing that cultural aspect to the field of medicine and public health. Second and third year students have the option of doing First Nations health and wellbeing, which we talk about global Indigenous health, and we also do Aboriginal health promotion and we're partnering with an Aboriginal rehabilitation centre and the students work closely with them to design a health promotion strategy.
Martha (Student): I had the opportunity to do a study tour in Indonesia and we got to learn about the health care system there. It's really interesting for me in particular because I'm interested in that and working with developing countries.
Laila (Student): I like to report the degree well, so I could get like lots of different perspectives and I wasn't sure what to like major in then. At least I had like different sort of topics that could guide me into choosing something.
Chelsea (Student): The academic staff are really helpful. They're approachable and easy to talk to. They want the best for their students, which is really nice.
Siobhan (Student): So the job prospects for a public health professional is really, really diverse. So in this course, we look at statistics, we look at epidemiology, we look at population health, we look at anatomy courses. So you can take what you like and go into any one of these fields.
Charles (Student): I would absolutely recommend this course to anyone interested in studying public health. I think it's one of the best courses you can possibly do. There's lots of opportunities on campus, lots of ways you can enrich your learning and you're going to learn a lot about the world and about the people that live in the world.
