I would like to share my experiences when I undertook Master of Public Health (Primary Health Care) from July 2008 until December 2009 . One and half years is enough time to understand and develop programs to overcome public health issues in developing countries such as in my country, Indonesia . In the first semester I learned deeply about the concepts of Comprehensive Primary Health Care and New Public Health, leadership and health planning. This became the basis of developing my public health practices in the next semesters. The guidebooks such as guide to learning and topic information are very helpful to can follow lessons. For international students like me, group discussions in class not only increased understanding but also improved conversations in English. Course coordinators, lecturers and tutors also had large contribution to increasing my involvement in class, understanding of assignments and choosing relevant books or references.
The course was very relevant to my current and future work. My past work since 1995 has been with local governments and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) to empower marginaised people such as poor families and women in South East Sulawesi province, Indonesia . In this province there are very complex issues so I will implement the Comprehensive Primary Health Care principles to address those. I will also apply concepts of the new leadership to work with stakeholders because I think that it can create good environment for collaborative work. I hope that I can contribute to improving marginaised people's health status in my country through developing these concepts which I have gained at Flinders Public Health.
