Master’s Degree in Epidemiology, Lebanese

I have grown up in Lebanon where life is hard for the majority of people, especially because of the prevalence of disease and a health care system that fails to address our ongoing health care crises. Both of my parents are doctors and this helped to sensitize me from a very young age concerning the suffering that surrounded me, especially insofar as many people died as a result of easily preventable disease. With my dad who is a neurosurgeon and my mom who is an ob/gyn, I am thankful to have had powerful role models throughout my development. My dad often gives people a second chance at life and my mom brings new, little people into the world. They have both been highly influential in my decision to also pursue a career as a health care professional, giving my all to do all that I can to minimize disease by fighting it at its source. I am already fully immersed in epidemiology in my private studies because I see it as an area that holds special promise for both public health and preventive medicine.

Watching poor people wander the streets in Beirut, desperately in need of help, this gradually instilled in me the dream of doing something about this tragedy that might be able to show concrete progress, if not for our children in Lebanon, at least for our grandchildren. Our public health challenges have also been exacerbated by war, first civil war, followed by devastating wars with Israel. This has resulted in inferior public health infrastructures in many areas of my country, even for a developing country.

I see your program at UXX as the best fit for my interests, especially because of the vast inter-disciplinary resources that I will be able to bring to bear on my quest to better understand and confront the spread of disease in Lebanon and throughout the Arab world.

Upon graduation from you program at UXX, it is my intention to return to Lebanon where I can put my new skills and understanding immediately to work. I intend to jump right in to two prominent struggles that are ongoing in my country: making both the water and the food safer to eat and drink.  I plan to put the skills that I hope to learn from UXX to good use in Lebanon. Your distinguished program will enable me to work on the creative edge of the search for new and more effective strategies to improve the quality and safety of food and water supplies, which will have enormous benefit over the long term.

The path that has led me to the field of public health began at a very young age. My dad’s hard work and perseverance, in particular, always motivated me to push especially hard and never give up. Like most of the Developing World, easily preventable disease is most common in Lebanon and this is where I want to dedicate my life, struggling against this enemy.  I have always been amazed and intrigued by how things work in our body, always wondering why certain people got sick while others did not. The class that I took in disease biology, in particular, greatly enhanced my understanding and also confirmed my desire to pursue graduate studies in epidemiology. 

Volunteering at a hospital has helped made me realize that it's not that people don't want to improve their health and the health of their children it's more that they are simply unaware of the nature and number of threats to their children’s health. This is why I see public health education as the foundation of preventative medicine. Your masters program at UXX would give me the experience and exposure that I am looking for, making full use of my passion for both math and biology. I look forward to the opportunity to develop my skills and enhance my knowledge as potential leader in my country in the area of public health.