We asked our student ambassadors to recount the last movie or TV show they watched, or the last book they read and how it tied back to public health.
Kate Colpetzer, Health Services Management student
Today I want to talk about movies! The last movie that I watched was Little Women (2019). This movie has some of my favorite actors and actresses, from Timothée Chalamet, Emma Watson, and Florence Pugh. It is a phenomenal movie!
Did you know Little Women could be related to public health? Taking place during the American Civil War, disease was rampant in this time. Due to battle conditions, unsanitary practices, and lack of medical/public health knowledge, some common diseases during this time include: scarlet fever, measles, and smallpox. According to Jonathan S. Jones, nearly two-thirds of deaths during this time were from diseases.
It really puts into perspective how lucky we are today to have the public health knowledge we do! Now go watch Little Women!
Lucy Khatib, Epidemiology student
The Last of Us is a new TV show that involves a lot of public health topics. The show is based on a game that follows two unlikely heroes in an apocalyptic world.
The apocalypse started by a pandemic of human-infecting fungus. We learned about a similar fungus called cordycepts that turns the ant into a zombie. It’s interesting to see how the show imagines this disease to have a new vector of humans, rather than ants. There are public health workers present in the show who try to mitigate the pandemic.
This show also is reminiscent of the Zombie Apocalypse and Doomsday Infections class here at the School of Public Health. I would recommend trying the class out and the show if you are interested in infection and pandemics!
Jaida Speth, Health Services Management student
“Mental health needs a great deal of attention.”
The most recent book I read was called The Defining Decade. The author, a clinical psychologist, breaks the book into three sections: work, love, and the brain and the body.
The chapters under the brain and the body section stood out to me the most because it provided tools to make the most of your relationships and identity in a decade of life when more and more young people are reporting feeling socially inadequate, socially isolated, and socially behind. She paints a picture of how important it is that mental healthcare expands to have the equal footing that physical healthcare has.
Public health touches everything in the world around you; it is in the water, air, buildings, people you encounter in every moment of every day, movies you watch, and even the books that you read!
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