For my STEP signature project, I traveled to Stockholm, Sweden and took a public health policy course through DIS Abroad. During this four week course, we learned about European health policy, health behavior and health promotion, and health disparities in a European context, which included lectures, field studies, and visits with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that focused on public health. We spent three weeks in Stockholm, and also had the opportunity to visit Dublin, Ireland for a week.
Immersing myself in another country’s culture for the first time was definitely a transformational experience. I had never traveled anywhere by myself before, and it was intimidating to visit a new country and attend a program where I knew no one else before arriving. As I navigated public transport, grocery shopping, academics, and participating in tourist activities in an entirely unfamiliar environment, I became much more confident in my ability to thrive in new situations. In addition, being in an environment where everyone shared my passion for public health was very inspiring and made my class experience much more memorable and enjoyable, reinforcing my desire to further explore public health.
When I first arrived in Stockholm, I was overwhelmed with a new language, culture, and academic program. However, DIS Abroad offered opportunities for us to learn more about Swedish culture and meet our classmates before classes began, and gave us a wide variety of resources to navigate Stockholm. We participated in trivia games about Swedish pop culture, a tour of the neighborhood we were living in, and a barbecue event in the forest. My class was also in the early afternoon, which gave us time to explore Stockholm and the surrounding areas before and after class. We were given the freedom to travel where and when we wanted after classes, which was a wonderful opportunity to gain confidence in my ability to navigate a new country.
During my time abroad, I was able to explore Stockholm and Dublin both with my entire class and in smaller groups of friends. Some of my favorite experiences include visiting a smaller island in the Stockholm archipelago called Vaxholm one weekend and going swimming, visiting a Viking Museum in Stockholm, visiting Uppsala, Sweden with a friend, taking a hike in the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland, going to afternoon tea with classmates in Dublin, and watching a performance of the Irish Riverdance. Throughout all of these experiences, I was able to connect with classmates from universities across the U.S. and Canada and learn more about their backgrounds and experiences, both on an educational and personal level. I also had the opportunity to interact with locals in each country and had countless conversations on public transport, in museums, in shops, and in the airport. It was so wonderful to see how proud Swedish and Irish natives were of their culture, and how welcoming and willing to share they were. These experiences made my understanding of culture much more personal and tangible, and they were absolutely invaluable.
This program also offered a variety of experiences related to public health that completely changed my perspective. Learning more about the Swedish and Irish approaches to healthcare, as well as health policy in a variety of European countries, gave me a new outlook on how healthcare can be tailored to a country’s specific needs and allowed me to see advantages and disadvantages of various healthcare systems that I would’ve have seen otherwise. We had unique opportunities to learn more about public health in each of the countries we visited. For example, we visited Spritmuseum in Stockholm to learn more about past and present alcohol policy in Sweden, the effects of alcohol on the body both long and short term, and how alcohol advertising and its regulations have changed over time. In Ireland, we listened to several speakers discuss their work with various health-related NGOs, including HIV Ireland and Alcohol Action, which were focused on HIV prevention, treatment, and influencing new policy related to HIV, and drawing awareness to the effects of alcohol on individuals, their families, and their children, as well as making recommendations for new alcohol policy, respectively. These experiences, combined with hearing the unique perspectives of my professor and classmates about public health and their ideas about policy, taught me so much about public health on an international level that continues to stick with me as I move forward in college.
I’m sure that everything I experienced during my study abroad program will continue to have an impact on the rest of my life, both personally and professionally. The skills that I learned while studying abroad, such as navigating public transport, immersing myself in a new culture, and communicating with others who primarily speak another language will be valuable as I continue to travel and have new personal and academic experiences. I made several meaningful connections with other students while studying abroad, and we still keep in touch and maintain our friendships, which were a wonderful part of my experience. In addition, as I move forward in my career, the new ideas and concepts I encountered will be extremely helpful. I plan to pursue a career in health law and policy, so this class and the opportunities it offered were a perfect fit. I really enjoyed learning about the healthcare systems in various European countries, unique health challenges across Europe and specifically in Sweden and Ireland, and policy that aimed to combat health problems and inequities in healthcare. This information, as well as experiences related to public health such as the Spritmuseum and lectures from NGOs, will give me a unique perspective in health policy and how it can be shaped. Overall, my study abroad experience was completely transformational and offered me a variety of skills, experiences, and memories that will help to shape the rest of my life.
