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Crafting a career with meaning.

Debra thought she wanted a clinical, patient-focused health career. But a Bachelor of Public Health with research has opened up a new world of meaningful career opportunities.

Through her many years living abroad and raising her children, Debra Loty’s love of actively contributing to society, particularly in the field of health, lead her into a variety of roles and training, including volunteering as a hazmat trained first responder.

When visa issues meant she couldn’t take up offers of study while living in the UK, Debra looked around for alternatives. With her kids now independent, she gravitated to ����logo’s Bachelor of Public Health (BPH). 

“I thought I wanted a clinical role. But I came across the BPH at ����logo and thought, ‘Hey, this is a different approach for entering the health sector’. It ticked a lot of boxes for me.”

One of those boxes was the ability to do the BPH 100% online. Debra and her family were living in Singapore when she enrolled, during Covid in 2020. 

Without a clear idea of a career, Debra began her BPH open to anything. Its broad scope, while a little overwhelming, was appealing because it allowed her to gain an understanding of the wide variety of fields that exist in public health. It was the final couple of courses that helped her pull all of her thoughts and options together, as she began looking at the next steps available to her.

“I think there’s a lot of degrees that create quite specific skill sets and the subsequent career paths can be relatively clear and defined. By comparison, a BPH is quite flexible and really caters for people’s individual interests. The open-ended nature of public health is a little daunting… And this is widely acknowledged by the course convenors, because many students have asked these questions before – What do I do now? What’s the next step? What are the potential avenues I could go down?... your options are only limited by your interests.”

Debra chose to complete the Public Health Capstone program by undertaking a research project, driven by her own interests and ideas. 

“[The Capstone program requires that you] sit down and self reflect, look at everything you’ve learned during the degree and ask ‘What were the things that really resonated with me? What things do I think I would be interested in making a career out of?’”

This process saw Debra reflecting on the knowledge and skills she had gained through her degree, and her previous years in health related settings and emergency response, and how she might combine it all.

She came up with a research proposal and began looking for a supervisor with experience in that area. Searching the ����logo website, she discovered Associate Professor David Heslop, whose research and interests aligned really closely with Debra’s proposal. However, the research project she ended up undertaking wasn’t exactly what she initially proposed. 

“My original proposal was an interesting idea, but you have to be ready to pivot and adapt to fit in with research that may be needed, or currently underway, or feasible with the time frame and resources available. The research I ended up doing did have some similarities to my original proposal, so I really enjoyed doing it. It’s been an amazing experience.”

Debra’s research project reviewed a draft decontamination policy for a major tertiary hospital in Sydney. The project evaluated the policy against established and validated frameworks and global best practice. It looked to see whether the policy could be refined to improve public health outcomes. 

“The report I developed found that by addressing safety, inclusivity, efficiency and effectiveness, you would likely improve public health outcomes in situations of chemical, biological or radiation (CBR) contamination. We also looked at how to foster compliance in patients who need decontamination, how to help them engage with the process, and also how to better protect frontline responders in a CBR mass casualty incident. We came up with a lot of actionable insights and recommendations.”

The goal of the research was to try and bridge the gap between evidence and policy, making sure policies stem from the strongest evidence base possible. Debra’s hope is that the findings and recommendations of the report will be adopted into the policies of the hospital, to strengthen its disaster response capability.

“It’s been really interesting to learn how to navigate established organisational dynamics to bring research into the mix, to make sure that policies align with evidence and global best practice.”

As for Debra’s next steps, she’s looking at her options, which include a Master by Research with A/Prof Heslop. 

“I’ve really enjoyed the research I’ve done. It gave me the opportunity to navigate academia and the real world and to discover that I really like the idea of being able to undertake research and get it out there so it benefits people. Otherwise, what’s the point? Now that I’ve had an opportunity to establish some fledgling relationships with organisations outside the university, including frontline response organisations, I will be aiming for a career that bridges the gap between research and implementation.”

Debra’s journey from clinical, patient-focused volunteering to public health research has been an exciting exploration of the potential for deeply rewarding work in the health space.

“The BPH was a different way to get into the field of health than I had envisioned for myself. But I’m actually really glad I’ve done it this way now. One of the things I love about the BPH degree is that I’ve found it very meaningful. While there is a place for every job and career out there – a functioning society demands it – having the chance to impact public health, not just one person at a time, but far more broadly, makes public health a really meaningful career avenue – I feel like I’m giving back, and for me personally, that’s really important.”