PERSONAL STATEMENT FOR LSHTM - PUBLIC HEALTH - LSHTM

My passion for Public Health

When writing your personal statement, you should consider the following topics:
 Why do you wish to take this particular course of study?
 Why are you applying to the School?
 How does it fit into your career objectives?

500 words

Dear Sir or Madam:

RE: Personal Statement for a Masters of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

My passion for Public Health stems from my experience with the healthcare system in Nigeria. While researching the impact of Onchocerciasis (River Blindness), I contracted malaria. I was working in a rural location with no hospitals or health centres close by, the locals advised me to drink fluids and rest. A colleague drove me to a dispensary where I received medical attention. This facility had a significant shortage of medical supplies. Despite all the advances made in prevention, diagnostics and treatment that I had studied in my undergraduate degree, there are still system-wide barriers to preventative care and primary healthcare delivery. A study evaluating the impact of the Bamako Initiative on the delivery of health care in Nigeria that demonstrated that people with financial means had a higher probability of accessing laboratory resources and seeking care in private clinics. This should not be the case; everyone deserves access to basic healthcare.

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is the third ranked university for public health in the world. The university is located in my home city where I will have the social support to complete my studies to a high standard. LSHTM is a world authority in public health research and supports culturally sensitive interventions as well as researched to strengthen global response to future infectious disease outbreaks. I was especially excited to read about the response to the Ebola epidemic. LSHTM offers applied experience and has a wide range of expertise. As a member institution of the University of London, it has a wide range of facilities and services as well as networking event.

Working in a Primary Healthcare Federation has allowed me to support programmes and services that support the NHS - both clinicians and the people of Oxford. The three primary barriers to effective care is access to primary care, workforce and operational weakness. My experience in the UK and in Nigeria has shown me that a comprehensive approach is required to overcome these barriers - knowledge that I will gain by furthering my studies at LSHTM. A Master of Public Health with a focus on Health Service Management will support me in achieving my career objective of working in supply chain management in public health development. The training that I going to gain at LSHTM will help me analyse the principles, structure and functions of health systems and range of key management concepts and functions in a variety of health care settings. After I obtain my degree, I am going to support primary healthcare delivery and will use my taught research skills to conduct high quality research based on the theory and practical skills gained during the course.

Yours faithfully

word count: 447

@jhara121
Hi there!

I see that you're new here. Welcome to the forum.

Taking an initial look in your essay, I find that it is well-written and composed with care. I applaud you for that. I recommend still that you optimize your essay. Doing this will create more substance within shorter word counts. Precision, mastery of techniques to compress your thoughts, and a straightforward writing approach are all helpful facets to consider when you are writing. It would as well be beneficial if you can omit parts of your text that are unnecessary or irrelevant to the core principles that you stand on.

That being said, I highly recommend trying to be more specific with the specifications of your objectives. While you had written a generalized map of your career and how the program fits into your long-term goals, I still recommend that you try to create more distinctions in what these truly mean. For instance, it is insufficient for you to mention that you want to be use learned principles on the structure and function of the health systems into supply chain management.

Be more specific. In what context does this fall into? In what situations do you see yourself taking these into account? What types of researches are lacking in the field? How do you plan to fill in these gaps of knowledge?

Best of luck in your application as always.

@Maria
Thank you so much!! I sincerely appreciate it. I did try to be concise, I will review it to make it more streamlined.