Letters / Mental health policies. Motivation letter for EuroPubHealth+ Erasmus Mundus Scholarship [4]

Hello! My name is Gustavo, I'm from Brazil and I'm applying for the EuroPubHealth programme. I really appreciate it if you would give feedback on my motivation letter! The prompt is below. Thank you in advance for your attention :)

Your letter should not exceed 600 words.
- Write about your motivations for the course: why would you like to study public health and this particular double-degree programme, how are your career plans connected with this programme, and what will be the added value for you to graduate from this course.

- It should include a strong justification for your second-year specialization choice.

- Do not repeat information already provided in your CV, however you may develop it E.g. if you mention some facts in your CV (voluntary work, internships, other activities etc.), in your motivation letter you may emphasize aspects of this experience that in your opinion are important to justify your predispositions for a public health programme.

- This motivation letter should not be a literary work. It should provide a concrete justification of why you are a good candidate for the EuroPubHealth+ programme.

- It is recommended to mention the specific interest in the area(s) of public health you would like to work on during your studies or/and after. The letter should also include a perspective on public health beyond the individual.

a solid foundation

I have struggled with mental health issues since my teenhood. I have grown up seeing how mental disorders can damage your life and your loved ones. My life experience, my passion for interdisciplinarity and my humanitarian values motivated me to build a career in public health. I believe that access to good quality health services is a basic human right and fundamental to assure people's dignity. For this reason, I desire to become a public health researcher to research and implement innovative forms of integrating mental health knowledge into primary healthcare and provide better training for professionals.

The EuroPubHealth+ programme will capacity me to face central public health challenges in my country and worldwide. Considering that Brazil's healthcare system proposes universal health access to a multicultural people, the masters' international environment will furnish cross-cultural debates to comprehend the multivariable characteristics of this field. In this way, I also will be able to address the United Nation's Social Development Goals regarding mental health and substance abuse.

I also have built my career toward public health as a form of retributing to society my studies in a public university. In college, I participated in public healthcare projects that taught me to team up with students and professionals from diverse health fields. I acquired leadership and management skills by setting up symposiums and presenting papers, coordinating a humanisation project and ministering leadership training for genetic counselling service managers. This last one was awarded in a congress and transformed into a scholarly book chapter which will be published.

Today working as a clinical psychologist and in a social work NGO, I have a broader perspective on public health. Assisting people from different social realities have shown me that intersectionality is vital for bringing solutions, even more dealing with mental health. It is crucial to listen to the people's demands, enhance bottom-up collective models of care and fill the gaps in the health workers' training. In addition, my experience in doing lectures about humanisation and mental health has demonstrated that health education is another way to empower people. Then, I aligned my choice of study path with my professional ambitions.

At the University of Sheffield, I will learn how to assess public health issues interacting with development processes, and monitor and evaluate public health responses and programmes at the local, national, and international levels to confront health inequalities. Moreover, it will provide essential skills for a researcher, such as using a wide range of research methods to understand and critically interpret data. I also intend to take elective modules in Health Psychology, Sociology of Health and Disaster and Emergency Management to deepen my knowledge of public mental health.

For the specialisation path, I chose the University of Maastricht. The programme discusses the organisational and social context of healthcare delivery across Europe, its diversity of practices and innovative research to formulate and implement effective health policies. The programme also uses problem-based learning and discusses governance and leadership in the health context, which are fundamental concepts for the political process of constructing and implementing public policies.

Thus I intend to use this know-how to research cultural-adapted mental health policies for Brazil's reality, considering that my country is as extensive and diverse as Europe.

Finally, EuroPubHealth+ will be a solid foundation to pursue a PhD and become a public health researcher. The exchange with other students will enhance our skills of working collaboratively and build a network to achieve a shared objective: constructing and applying new knowledge to improve people's health and, as a consequence, their lives.