Intro

Hi everyone,

My name is Daniel Ramos and I am a junior double International and Latin American Studies major. I am originally from Los Angeles, California and lived in Boston, Massachusetts for a couple years. I am taking this course because I am very interested in urban policy for graduate school and possibly a career. I took this class because I understand that there is often a disconnect between the science of public health and the policy makers and/or politicians that are responsible for the implementation of public health in an urban setting. I hope that my blog will take the perspective of a city administrator, policy advisor, or politician, and I hope that I can collaborate with those a more science perspective on public health in class to bridge the disconnect that exists between the two groups.  I understand that public health policy is a pivotal part of maintaining a healthy successful city, and as such I thought taking Intro to Public Health would be a perfect opportunity to widen my knowledge of public policy as it relates to public health in a metropolitan area. I believe public health is the study of attempting to improve the well being of the entire society rather than on an individual case by case basis. I believe public health includes the study of disease prevention, nutrition, socio-economic disparities, and hygiene. In have a strong interest in urban policy, particularly in city management and working with underprivileged communities, both of which relate strongly with to public health policy. After working with poverty stricken communities, especially metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles Boston, and Baltimore, I have come to realize that impoverished communities experience public health issues to a magnified degree because of population density, lack of health care, lack of education, poor dietary habits which leads to under nutrition, poor sanitary conditions, and poor hygiene. I am interested in public health because I want to know what the politicians and their policy advisors can do to help empower and educate impoverished communities on public health issues in order to shrink the socio economic disparities that plague low income communities. My general impression of the first four classes is that we will be dealing with the policy aspects of public health rather than the science of it. I am a little surprised at the macro level perspective that public health takes within their field of study. I was very interested to hear about the history and statistics of public health. I have zero doubt that advances in public health have had a direct effect on the ability of metropolitan areas to grow to the size that they have grown to today. So far I have enjoyed our first two weeks of class and I hope the rest of the semester proves to be as interesting and informative as these first two weeks. I look forward to hearing feed back from my fellow classmates, the professor, and the teaching assistants.

Daniel