Student Profiles

Aila is a British Colombia native who moved to Halifax to attend Dalhousie University for the Health Promotion program. She was interested in health for society and liked the many available elective credits. She was drawn to the program and, due to limited offerings of Health Promotion undergraduate programs across Canada, decided that Halifax was her preferred location. She is currently in her first year of the program and says that her favourite things about the program are the support, professors, tight-knit community and courses. Her favourite course thus far has been Introduction to Health Communications because it incorporated so many real-life skills and different methods of communicating. She has also enjoyed partaking in Interprofessional- Health Education Courses as part of the degree. Her interests are in mental health, minority health, and health policy. She appreciates how much the program has helped her to be open-minded and develop an appreciation and understanding for varying perspectives.

Kate is from Nova Scotia and chose to pursue Dalhousie University’s Health Promotion program so that she could intervene with health before the onset of illness. She knew another person in the program and thought that it would be a good opportunity for herself as well. Being in her third year, so far, she has enjoyed the diversity in the courses in both sciences and arts to explore what she liked. Her favourite classes, although very different, have been Physiology and Health Promotion Policy. She aims to continue her interest in health policy in the future and work in a career related to harm reduction. She is a member of the Dalhousie Health and Wellness Peer Well-Being Team, where she works in harm reduction, mental health, and many other health events for the Dalhousie community. She states that Health Promotion is about learning to think in an "us" mindset, not an "I" mindset when it comes to intervening with health. She hopes to work in the health promotion field following graduation and then potentially explore educational routes in medicine.

Kristen is from Scugog, Ontario and moved to Halifax to pursue a science degree before switching to the Health Promotion program. She really enjoyed learning about social impacts on health and learning how to evaluate and implement interventions to address these issues. I also really liked that there was a mandatory internship. She likes that she has been able to connect with like-minded people and getting to get to know all the professors and students, as this program is relatively small. Her favourite course has been Health Promotion Policy. She had a unique experience getting to do an independent study with the school of HAHP, which helped her learn way more about research in the health promotion field. She really liked being able to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes for the implementation of new interventions for different things. She also volunteers with the DMCRT and says that this experience has given her insight into the way some of the implementations of health promotion strategies (such as harm reduction for substance use on campus) have a significant impact on the student's well-being. She believes that being openminded and empathetic has helped her significantly with her degree. Additionally, she hopes to continue to work in global health policy with grassroots organizations and further pursue a Master of Health Administration. She has always been interested in the WHO and Doctors Without Borders and how they set the standard for what developed and developing countries set for their health policies/programming.
 

Grace is from Halifax and wanted to stay close to home, so she looked into Dalhousie’s programs. She landed on Health Promotion because she had never heard of It before, and I liked how the program offered a good mix of science and social science courses. It had the flexibility to help her figure out what direction she wanted to go in the health field. She finds Health Promotion a great fit because of the opportunities to enrich and expand learning outside the classroom through honours, internships, relationships with professors, and the Health Promotion Society. Grace is a member of the Health Promotion Society and does lots of volunteering and attending conferences with them, which further facilitates her interests. Having participated at the Alzheimer's Society Conference in 2023, she has focused her HPRO interests on cancer care and community end-of-life care. She plans on pursuing a master's following her completion of the program. She believes that to be a good Health Promotion student one should have compassion, altruism/selfless desire to help others, volunteer experience in healthcare or community, open-mindedness, and want to be an advocate and ally for others. She also notes that relationship building, listening and respecting different points of view is essential for the program.

Alexandra is from Dartmouth, and after taking a Sociology of Health and Illness Class at SMU she changed the direction of her post-secondary career. The course jump-started my interest in the social determinants of health, health disparities and policy and made her inclined to transfer from Saint Mary's to Dalhousie in the Winter of 2022 and start HPRO in the Fall of 2022. The best part has been the people she has met in her classes and how supportive the faculty and staff are. Her favourite course so far has been Health Promotion Policy because it was the first time she had thought about how policy can shape health and how people involved in creating those policies often do not realize the impact they are having on community and population health outcomes. She is just starting her Honours project and is excited about how that will contribute to her learning. She would like to go to law school at Dalhousie and do the joint program with the Masters of Health Administration. She states that it is important for students in the Health Promotion program to be able to write and articulate thoughts in a written form and work with other students. There are many opportunities for group work with students in and outside of the program so knowing how to work in a group and implement different studies and perspectives is essential.