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Student profile: Rebecca Crosby

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Rebecca Crosby

What was your career path up to doing the Masters in Public health?

I started my undergraduate degree in 2011 in Biomedical Science in the Life Sciences department of the University. I thoroughly enjoyed this, in particular the epidemiology and public health module in third year. My dissertation project was on a public health related topic and my supervisor was talking to me, asking what I was planning to do after the end of my degree and when I mentioned that I loved the public health component but didn’t know what to do afterwards he suggested I researched the Masters in Public Health course run at the Medical School. I went straight to the masters from the undergraduate degree. However, the majority of my classmates had come from a working environment and it was helpful for them to have this background knowledge and insight to relate the academic course material to real life situations and events.

Why did you choose to study MPH? Did you always know you wanted to study a PhD?

My primary reason was the love of the topic and wanting to learn more techniques for research in this field. I also researched future career paths in public health sector. The majority of those require MPH training as a key component of faculty membership. Eventually I would like to continue with this training in the future. Throughout my undergraduate degree I was adamant research was not for me. I did not like the idea of spending all day wearing a white coat and being in a lab all day. I can’t remember when my opinion changed but I suddenly realised my mistake and that there were options for PhD degrees that were ‘desk-based’ and were in fields that I was really interested in. It seemed like the natural flow for my career and was something I was interested in.

Why did you choose to study at WMS and not another university?

Warwick University is a very highly regarded university. It is part of the Russell Group and a degree completed with this institution will always look good on the CV for potential employers. I enjoy the University and I believe the Medical School has a good, friendly ethos. A personal recommendation by my undergraduate supervisor about the quality of the course made me feel like it would be a good choice, and one that fitted with my personal living situation too.

Please tell us something of your experiences on the course

The course is delivered in a intensive block-learning style manner. This means that while you might be on campus 9:30am -5:30pm Monday to Friday one week, you might then have a month until you have to come back onto campus and this time is to be spent reading and writing your assignments. This style of learning worked perfectly for me as I could be flexible about other work I was doing which helped my financial situation.

I thoroughly enjoyed the health screening module, but this was a personal preference. I enjoyed that the modules were so varied – from epidemiology and statistics to sociology in public health and even to health economics. I loved that the masters modules options are continually developing – the health economics module was in its infancy with our cohort.


I definitely gained a lot of knowledge about different aspects that entwine in public health. These will be useful to consider for my doctoral thesis. However, regardless of future career path the information learnt in this degree would be of use for a number of different job roles.
I would recommend the course to a lot of people, I personally had a good experience with it. I liked the fact alongside a few compulsory modules you could choose from a number of options to complement previous research/topic knowledge or to expand your learning further.