Shortly after I joined France’s Public Health team in October, I heard about Euronet mainly through CLISP (National Public Health Resident Association in France), and I was quite curious about European Public health Association.
My name is Manon Burgat, I live in Dijon and I am a French resident.
At the beginning, my main interest in Euronet meeting was to do a training course in a European Country and to improve my English vocabulary.
But it turned out to be more than that. Euronet leaves its marks, physically (probably just the Nancy’s one) and in your heart.
Nancy’s meeting occurred in March, from the 8th to the 10th. It’s a beautiful city, known for “La place Stanislas”, listed in the UNESCO world heritage and also for ”macarons” French biscuits. Moreover it’s not far from Dijon. (173 kilometres to be precise)
I am not going to write about the food poisoning, the disease we’ve all survived, the amazing people I met, the 2018 women’s day, the general assembly or the crazy nights we’ve spent. I just want to write you about Public health promotion.
Public health promotion was the title of one of the working groups we had during Thursday morning. It was led by Damir, a Croatian resident. Only French people attended this working group, supposing public health had a poor reputation among French students.
A lot of ideas were developed. We began our work with the premise that there is no common definition of“Public health”. What is it? What is the daily routine of a public health doctor? Do you define public health by quoting the different possibilities of work?
In France for example, students don’t choose medical studies to be a public health doctor. They choose it to cure, to save, and to help patients. To study clinic’s. (Public spirit 🙂 ). The speciality is not well known, and it is just at the end of the medical school that French students start to think about choosing public health speciality. Furthermore, there is no public health work experience during the first years. And at the final exam, public health is one of the last specialty chosen.
After this analysis, what can we do to make public health more glamourous or attractive?
We can take for example a look at what they did in the United States. They had a campaign “this is public health “ created by the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health in order to “brand public health and raise awareness of how public health affects individuals, families, communities, and populations”. In the US, public health is very attractive among students!
From there, we talked mainly about having “public health promoter” in cities who can talk about public health, in conferences for example. We can do European leaflets with a cool headline, distribute them in each country. We could have a reference website, where public health work is described…
We are at the beginning of the working group and there is so much left to do to promote public health. And not only in France! All your ideas are welcome! Go to Valencia and share them with us! 🙂
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Manon Burgat
Public Health Resident, Dijon