Adrienne Veyna is a student at the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Denver campus. She will graduate in May 2010 with a master’s degree in public health (with an emphasis on health systems management and policy). Adrienne serves on the executive committee of the Colorado School of Public Health Student Council as the student director of student and faculty relations.
While working on my undergraduate degree in health exercise science at Colorado State University, I attended classes with students who were on track to become doctors, nurses, physician assistants and various medical providers. During those classes, we learned about the mounting health burdens the country faces. Though many of my classmates were convinced the best way to attack the country’s many health problems was to become a medical provider, I lacked the certainty that medicine was the field where I could best help the nation work towards solutions. I recall sitting in class thinking to myself, “There must be some way these issues can be solved on a larger scale.” I wasn’t exactly sure what that “large-scale solution” was at the time, but the Colorado School of Public Health did not exist back then.
Five years later, while working on a research project at the University of Colorado Denver, I learned that UC Denver (in collaboration with CSU and the University of Northern Colorado) was about to open the first school of public health in the Rocky Mountain region. After researching the curriculum, I decided that public health (specifically, the health systems management and policy concentration) represented the large-scale solution I was seeking.
As I began my classes, I quickly realized my instincts were correct. Courses in policy, law, economics and health systems, and my professional experiences through the program, have validated my notion that the problems associated with health care will require large-scale changes that will take years to work out and implement. Now I am about to graduate with my master’s degree in public health. There are limitless opportunities in front of me to be a part of that large-scale change.
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