Ros McDermott is a Geography Major from the University of Birmingham who is in Singapore for a year. In addition to taking up public health modules for her exchange programme, she is also doing an internship with the School’s Public Health Translational Team (PHTT). Today we talk to her to find out more about what she has learned here so far.
Tell us about your course of study and what bought you to Singapore.
In UK I do a relatively new course called ‘Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences’ at the University of Birmingham. This an interdisciplinary degree where you can take any major and then supplement it with modules from different courses. Unfortunately, in the UK you can’t take undergraduate public health courses (unless combined with nursing) so I built my own. For example, I take human biology modules, statistics and human geography (my major) which allows me to examine the spatiality and patterns of mortality and health.
I was interested in Singapore because of the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health and the country’s public health policies in general. Learning about behavioural economics in geography, we looked at Singapore as the main case study for the implementation of nudge tactics in health, and this sparked my interest in it as a location for my year abroad. I was worried about going somewhere so new to me, but am so happy I was placed here and was pushed out of my comfort zone into an amazing country.
What has struck you the most so far in the public health modules that you are taking at the school?
I was really struck by the focus on policy implementation. In two of the modules I took, we had to create our own intervention programmes and it seemed like a lot of the focus was on the ability to constantly move forward and produce interventions rather than reflect on past ones.
Something that also really interested me was the differences in viewpoint on certain health issues between UK and Singapore. For example, with issues of obesity in UK, there have been growing body positivity movements that advocate for the movement away from shame tactics being used to encourage weight loss. However, in Singapore, particularly when talking to local students in the class, there was much more of a straightforward focus on getting an individual to act to change their physical body weight regardless of consequences to mental health. Regarding sexual health, there was a lot more focus on abstinence being a solution for sexually transmitted diseases here than I had expected. From my perspective, the promotion of abstinence seems to be contrary to healthy (and realistic) dialogue between people discussing sexual health.
Tell us about some of the work that you are doing with the Public Health Translational Team at the School.
I was working on a paper to provide some background research for a proposed salt reduction policy for Singapore in order to reduce blood pressure in the population. At first, I thought the subject would be quite simple. However, once I started researching, I realised that the scientific consensus on the effectiveness of salt reduction policies for normotensive populations is divided. I also found out that potassium levels in my diet potentially impact my blood pressure levels, which was something I had never heard about before!
My work particularly highlighted to me the importance of context-specific policy. For example, transplanting UK’s successful salt reduction strategy with food industries to Singapore would undoubtedly fail as it does not address some of the main sources of sodium in the Singaporean diet, such as food prepared outside of the home in food courts.
Is public health something you would like to pursue as a career? If so, which area and why?
I am very set on the idea and have really appreciated getting some real-life experience of what it would be like to do public health as a career! My degree has led me to appreciate that public health is a truly interdisciplinary field. It combines the central medical aspect with economics, and uses insights from psychology, sociology, geography and anthropology to build policies.
These policies are then implemented using methods from across disciplines, like politics and business management. In other words, public health takes the entire picture into account when it comes to health.
Moreover, health itself is not something that is easily defined, and a medical perspective is not enough to appreciate this. Health can also encompass well-being in a community for example, and culture can impact our perceptions of health or someone’s reception to medical help. I think it is the real reason I am so enthusiastic about getting into it as a career: it provides an exciting opportunity to apply the interdisciplinary skills I have learnt in my degree to real-life situations. In particular, I think I would appreciate working in an area tackling the detrimental effects of climate change on human health. In the future years, I want to be prepared to help in the situations that we are going to be facing around climate change.
Tell us something surprising about you that people may not know.
I have a diploma in musical theatre performance and performed in shows. I absolutely love that buzz you get when you come off the stage. Unfortunately, I was never that great at the dancing part!