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Um Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. Um We're just gonna wait for a few more minutes to let some more people join and we'll get started as soon as we can. But thank you so much for joining and a few questions before we start, please do put them in the chart and we'll do our best to answer them. Sorry that anyone is just filtering in. Uh will team the call in a couple of minutes. We'll get started in just a minute. Thank you so much for waiting everyone. Just a reminder that um today's entire talk will be recorded. So if you know, if anyone who couldn't join us live today, they can access all the recordings um on the website afterwards. So I think we'll get started and thank you so much to everyone for joining us today. Um Just a bit about who student me a London are. So we're a community interest company that aims to coordinate the redistribution of excess medical supplies to individuals, communities and places that are in need of such resources. And we do that by linking projects with prospective donating organizations. Um Our vision is for everyone around the world to have fair and more importantly, equitable access to healthcare and healthcare resources and also for future healthcare professionals to have an awareness, motivation and ability to be able to make a positive impact on global health and sustainability. Um Our mission is to create a network of donating and receiving organizations as well as volunteers to help us with this donating and receiving. Um and also to raise raise awareness about the um important global health and sustainability topics through educational initiatives such as today. Um A bit more about what we do. So we do this redistribution of medical resources to low income settings. We educate students in London about important global health and sustainability issues. We conduct research in the field of global health and sustainability and also medical education related to these topics. We facilitate the equator access to medical resources and healthcare in the UK and abroad. Most recently, we did this by holding a series of webinars for um refugees and asylum seekers who'd arrived from Syria and Ukraine to the UK and informing them about their rights to access health care in the UK and how to use the NHS. We host talks and speakers in the field of global health and sustainability such as today, we also have our annual Global Health hackathon which occurs every single year in March and we look forward to seeing lots of you there um Later this year as well. Um We'd really like to have as many people get involved with us as possible. You can do this by following us on social media and you can check out our website and you can also sign up to our newsletter where if we've got any events, but also if we require any volunteers for um the supply of resources to low income settings, we can contact you and anyone who's available can sign up with us. Um So what we'll be doing today, so today will be have the incredible opportunity to learn about careers and other opportunities in the field of global health and sustainability. And we have two amazing speakers with us who have an incredible experience of um global health sustainability and also public health and have a lot of expertise in this field. At the end, we'll also have a fun global health and sustainability based quiz where there's opportunities to win a 25 lb Amazon voucher. Um Also the benefit of today is we'll have opportunities to ask our speakers any questions we have about getting involved in the field of global health sustainability and public health as well. Um This is a quick rundown of how today will be working. And we're hoping for um a timely end at 8 30 and equip you to our sponsors, Key Medics MDU and past the MRC S. Um um This event would not be possible without them and please do use a QR code to check out the amazing content and work that they do. So. Um We're really excited today to introduce our first speaker. So, Doctor Richard Pinder is a clinical senior lecturer and experienced public health physician with a special interest in health care and health system management. He lives the undergraduate public health department within Imperial School of Public Health. Um His team develop um delivers world leading UC patient training and research across primary care and population health sciences with a focus on translation and practice. He's also the course director of the Global Health BS E. He's held a wide range of roles across the NHS local government, national government and the private sector including a senior policy adviser to the Department of Health and Social Care. So thank you so much for joining us and Doctor Pinder and I'll hand over to you. Well, thank you very much. Um Chance. Yeah, and um I'm gonna try and share my slides. This did work in the rehearsal. So um let's see what happens. OK. I'm hoping that's coming through. I'm just looking to see something. Yeah, I care about she so OK. Well, very nice to meet all of you. Um And um yeah, it's uh it's a pleasure to, to, to, to see people interested in global health and public health. Um coming on a on a cold damp um Thursday evening with lots of cheap issues, but um good to meet all of you and I'm looking forward to the questions afterwards. Um, it's always a little bit of a challenge. I feel when you sort of get asked about sort of careers advice. Um, and, um, I sort of perhaps I'll start on, on, on this slide which, um, I was asked to do a career session, um, at my old school, uh, with kind of, what was it? Um, they're probably about 13 or 14 year olds and I've sort of done a lot of medical students, junior doctors type things, but I was asked to go and speak to these, um, 13, 14 year olds, um a few months back and I was really struggling to know what to say cos it, it's very difficult to kind of, you know, as you get more senior and older, you kind of really struggle to relate to some of the kind of the challenges that I um see among all of the bachelors and masters students that I work with on a daily basis. Um But I sort of dug this out when I was clearing some files a few months back and this was my career's guidance um back from 17th of September 1999 which to me, seems like relatively recently, but to you guys, um it's probably before many of you guys were actually born. Um But here is what they suggested I do. So I was 15 when they told me this and hospital doctor is kind of the top Well, I don't know, it's the first one on the list. I don't really understand, um, what any of these numbers mean or whether they, they ranked or something like that. But I'm always deeply skeptical of careers advice, very, very skeptical of all of it. Um, but I'll come back to this, um, in, er, towards the end of the presentation. But, um, I'm always deeply suspicious of anyone who sort of tries to give this career advice cos everyone's career um is so different but there are potentially um some important things and I'll try and surface some of those um as we're going along um today, but a hospital doctor um didn't go into pharmacy to pharmacy wants dentistry, didn't go into general practice. Um, but I'll talk a little bit around why maybe some of the things I've landed on and eventually started doing, maybe relate to some of those other possibilities. So, um meeting with harsher and colleagues um last week or week before, um we sort of said, well, I'll try and do three things. Um, and I was gonna say a little bit around um what I spend my time doing how I got here and then a little bit about public health training. So I'm a public health consultant by background and my official job plan. So all consultants have these job plans. Um sort of divides up our time into these 10 half day sessions per week and, and theoretically this is what I'm, I'm meant to do in my um consultant academic role. So I might sort of spend two days a week um thinking about all things public health and population health across the various um curricula that we have here in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College in London. Um I work on the global health um intercalated BSE. So that's always great fun getting to meet all of our in at Imperial. We do in the fourth year. Um I do a couple of sessions on post graduate education as well. Um And if anyone's interested in that do do explore our M PH program at Imperial, um It's really, really um interesting and really, really good fun. Um But if that's something you want to do later on your career and then I have these other sort of what we do s pa time where I sort of do all sorts of things including educational supervision. So are higher specialty trainees. Um I work bits of advisory stuff to the NHS. Um I'm also a bit of a weird academic and I don't really do very much research. I do do a bit of research but not um my sort of contract and my arrangement is not based on that other CPD. Um I'm doing a master's in education at the moment. I'm also um editing a textbook. So um that is what I meant to do. Um But I can tell you that there is no average week. Um And actually, that's a really great thing around, um, you know, working as an academic rather than as a conventional clinical consultant. Um, it's similar in academia as it is in kind of conventional public health. If you're working as a consultant, there is really no average week. Yes, there are some meetings um, that will come up each week. But actually, um, it's very, very flexible and it changes all the time and I like novelty. That's something I've discovered about myself. I'm something that likes building things. Um I don't necessarily like sustaining things. I'm always interested in the next um things that I've not done. So how did I end up here? And again, when you sort of do this careers stuff, you kind of have this idea that somehow you're in a place that is an endpoint. And I think um I definitely don't feel like that. I still feel I'm very much on the journey. Um But just kind of, I guess thinking to where you guys are right now. I got my, what we call P MQ, the primary medical qualification at M BBS at G KT. Er that was back in 2008. I did a BSE in Radiological Science. Um I then moved on to what's now called S FP back then. It was called Academic Foundation program, but I did that um again at uh Kings and at GST T er, so just over in um Lamberth and South. And then um I moved over to do an ACF so that's the first step of the integrated academic training program. Um And that's when I joined Imperial where I've been basically ever since that was back 13 years ago now, uh which does feel like a very long time. And then in September 2015, um I took up my first consultant post and um basically in about 20 late 2018, early 2019, I came over to Imperial full time as an academic, but there's a gray box in the middle. And one of the things that I hope if you've not already heard from people is that when people like me present our careers in a sort of quite linear fashion, um It is a massive, massive um er discrepancy from what the reality is because actually there's loads of other stuff um that goes on in and around this and I'm gonna say a little bit more around what should be in that gray box somewhere in between starting my ACF and um starting my first consultant job because again, we sort of go around um not necessarily always forward but sometimes sideways. So um I didn't, well, I did follow that iso career advice, I guess. So I applied to medical school and I chose G KT um down at Kings because the intergrated BSC wasn't compulsory. And my view at the time as an 18 year old or 17 year old. Basically I started was um why on earth would I want to go and do research, cos proper doctors actually see patients and research is what? Yeah, obviously you can't hack it do. So that's why I ended up at G KT uh rather than um imperial or UCL, which were definitely a curiosity to me, but I thought I didn't really want to do that sixth year. But um because I'm a, I'm a herd creature in some ways, all my friends were doing BSE S so I thought I would do well. And I chose Radiological Science and for me, that was a really um important moment I would say in my career because it fundamentally reshaped my view of what academia and what research is. Um And I think one of the things that um I learned along the way is that I've never been very good at written exams that's always been, I've always performed much better in, in course assessment and in, you know, written reports, oral presentations, things like that M CQ exams, you know, rote learning Krebs cycles and things like that has never particularly interested me. Um It's, I've also never performed very well in them and I suspect there's a bit of circular logic there, er, to how I sort of thought, well, actually the research was, was potentially really um exciting and interesting for me. And so I did this research which um, and I'm not first author on that paper. But it was my first foray. And what we were trying to do was we were trying to use um volumetric assessment of um cardiac MRI scans, which at the time was really difficult to do. Cos you couldn't do fast MRI scan, you got all these motion artifacts and we sort of reassembled um the volumetrics of this based on this sort of cross sectional approach. So absolutely, the furthest away you can potentially get from public health. Um One might argue, but for me, that was the moment where I thought actually, I quite enjoy research. I like the flexibility. Um I like the problem solving aspect and um you know, it's pretty interesting. So I suddenly became open, I think to a research career at that point. Now, on the back of that, I was sort of, you know, having chats with various people and saying, well, can you do radiology academically? And I was told very, very clearly, there are, there are very few academic chairs in, in radiology. It's not really um you know, big academic discipline. Uh I'm not sure how few that is now cos I seem to see quite a few people in academic radiology. Um But they said don't do that. Um You need to go to a more conventional discipline. But then in fourth year of medical school cos we did our BSE S in our third year or between 2nd and 3rd year at um G KT. And I think in most medical schools we talk about five years rather than six years and periods are a little bit odd in that respect. But, um, I found an SSC so I'm not sure what they're now called. They used to be called special study modules and then they became special study components and I don't know if they even exist at all medical schools anymore. But, um, I found this SSC that was about military health and epidemiology and, um, looking at the consequences of the, um, then the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts on mental health. And I'd always have this interesting in his, I'd always have this interest in history and, um, politics and I've been a reservist and suddenly this kind of seemed like a really interesting opportunity to combine the research interest and also my sort of personal interests. So, um I did this SSC and I met these two people and I cannot emphasize from a career point of view how valuable it is to meet people and get to know people along the way. And some of you might recognize the gentleman on the left there that is at the time, he was just Prof Simon Wesley. He's now sir Simon Wesley. Um, and he's done all sorts of, um, fantastic things. Um, since then, I absolutely nothing to do with me, but Simon was my first, um, real sort of proper academic boss. And then on the right hand, side is Professor Nicola Fear again. Um the, the time um Doctor Nicola Fear, um and they really looked after me and they showed me the ropes and um with them on this SSC I wrote my 1st 1st author publication which in any sort of um anyone working in academy is obviously sort of AAA really um big round. Uh It's not a brilliant paper. It took about 2.5 years to publish. It was a totally miserable experience in terms of the publication process. But um it got me into the approach and, and understanding the flexibility and how you do science. I would argue it's um mixed method stuff as well. Which again, I'm a quantitative epidemiologist who dabble sometimes in a bit of qualitative methodologies. Er, but I certainly, um, you know, that was a, that was a really interesting experience and, and sort of brought together those interests. Um, but they've, they really looked after me. They really kind of, you know, went out to give me that career advice. And again, for all of you, I'd say, um the best thing you can do is reach out to people and get their perspectives and it was coming up to Christmas that year and Simon had been given some money to um look at the consequences of um this poisoning of um 2 10 Polonium. I'm not sure if you guys um would have been even alive at the time. Uh You'd have been alive. You've been very, very young. I suspect most of you. Um, this is a former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who uh what happened to him? He um upset the Kremlin and they came after him and they put pelonium, which is a um radioactive radionuclide um in his tea and we had this kind of trail of 2 10 polonium across London. Um, and Simon had got this money to uh fund some research into basically how people were perceiving the threat perception caused by this radioactive substance. And um sheer luck really, the fact that I'd just come out of a Radiological Sciences degree. And so I had some understanding of sort of the, um you know, the medical physics, er, and all of that and I happened to be in his team and I sort of demonstrated a bit of capability and competence in some of the research. Um They actually paid me and this other medical student um Paul Riley who's on there um to go and do these qualitative interviews, uh semi structure interviews over the course of a Christmas break and we went off and did it. Um And, you know, for me, that was a really, really big moment first B MJ. Um and my only B MJ um publication that's when I was in um you know, the last last couple of years of medical school and I'll tell you why this is important because um at the time I really you know, thought it was research, it was um, you know, mental health, psychological medicine research. Um, but alongside this, I've always been interested in politics as well. And so I did my half of my elective, uh, with the gentleman on the left there, some of you might remember him. He was former, um, Secretary of State for Health. This was back when Andrew Lansley was still in opposition. Um, I went and I spent um six weeks, er, the other sp six weeks I spent at Johns Hopkins doing pediatric um critical care and anesthesiology. So quite different uh to that. Um But II learned a lot from Andrew. Um in the middle, there is a picture of me with Professor Roger Williams who died um last year. Er, and that's us at number nine Downing Street. We just briefed. Um This wasn't when I was a medical student, this we briefed um Oliver Letwin, the, the cabinet office minister on um some improvements that we were seeking to make in liver care. Um And essentially I was sort of at this um crossroads where I think Simon and Nicola had been hoping that I was gonna go down the line of an acf in um epidemiological psychiatry or kind of psychiatry. And I, my view was I really enjoyed the epidemiology. I really enjoyed the policy and what I was so impressed by Simon with was that he was able to kind of do some research and then change how things happened in the real world. And for me, that was, that was brilliant that, you know, that, that's what I wanted to do. Um, and I had to break the news. I said, you know, I, I'm not convinced that psychiatry is necessarily the specialty for me. And he said, well, ok, fine. And he said, um, I had lunch with this lady, um, last week, uh, and she's the lady at the bottom right there. So this is Gillian Holsworth doctor's Gillian Holdsworth. Um, if anyone's aware, she's the person who set up sh 24 which is the, one of the uh the former London Sexual Health Services. And he said that you'd met Gillian and she's a public health consultant. And um and I was like, well, can you be a consultant in public health? And um and, and Simon said, yes, yes, you can. I've never heard of it. And um two weeks later, the ACF applications come out and I applied for public health as an ACF. And um it was so, and I tell my staff and my team this, they all kind of raise an eyebrow and go well, that now makes sense. But the, the, the year I applied there, there were five ACF posts in London for Public health Medicine. They only appointed two of us. They literally couldn't put people into these posts. So, um compared to how public health is now where it's incredibly competitive back then it really wasn't. So when, when I tell my staff that they sort of all raise an eyebrow and go, ah, so that's how it happened. But it really was kind of like just a serendipitous series of events of people meeting each other and then sort of saying the right thing at the right time. And, you know, the thing that I think probably is a deficit in my career journey has been, I've never really had much of a plan and I think that's quite unlike a lot of um academics, certainly who do have a plan. Um On the one side, I can say I've never been disappointed. Um But I've just sort of walked through doors as they've um arisen. So I went off did public health training, which is a five year training program. The first year you go and do an M Ph, so a master of public health, which is part of the program and I loved it. Um Yeah, sure. There were some down moments. Um But it was brilliant. I got to rotate through all sorts of placements working in different government agencies. I got to work in the London 2012 Olympics in the run up of the, some of the emergency planning exercises went off and spent a year and a half at GE in ST Thomas's designing and um working through the kind of implications of a new cancer center trying to figure out how many CT scanners. So again, hinting back to that sort of old radiology experience. Um And then um one of the big pieces I did was uh on behavior change and antibiotic prescribing. So, working with um the Department of Health as it was then Public Health England, which had just been formed. And um Sally Davis, who was the chief medical officer, um Sally was the person who sort of commissioned all of this work. And again, that was fascinating working in Whitehall, you know, um dropping in on meetings over in, um you know, the treasury building at the cabinet office, really, really interesting um and a great experience to try and understand how decisions are made and how decisions aren't made. Um And there's, there's two things that probably, I remember my first day in the civil service, they said, um, the first thing you need to learn is, um, never take responsibility for an it project. I've always taken that to heart ever since, uh wherever I've been. Um And the other big discussion we had was um uh HS two. This was, this was how many years ago. And um it's sad that that's now closed. But um they all told me back when I started. HST was the big news that week. They all said that's never gonna happen. Uh And I always thought we'd prove them wrong, but sadly not, they were, they were right. But that's how I sort of spent my, my five years and again, the first time you get invited to, um, number 10, um, and you get to walk through the door and all the rest of it is, um, is a really eye opening, a really, um, fun thing to do. But I did have doubts. I've never been 100%. Possibly. I'm not sure. I'm meant to say this in public. I haven't been 100% committed really to, to many things. Um I've always sort of sought to keep doors open and I think my problem career wise has always been um a reluctance to close doors, but I did have doubts um during public health, you know, you, you, you're in a specialty that's not particularly certainly back then. Um as prestigious as, you know, your, your friends in cardiology or gastroenterology or surgery. Um you know, the the arrangements are um pretty frustrating, sometimes progress is slow. And so I dabbled for a few years working in pharmaceutical industry. Um so working on kind of scientific communications, medical writing, um a bit of health education, a bit of market access um and really enjoyed it. Um really interesting experiences so, so different to kind of what life is like normally in the public sector. And um I was out in, in San Francisco, I can remember it ash 2014. So that's the American Society of Hematology. I didn't know there was 65,000 hematologists in the world, but I was out there and, um, I think it was on day four of the conference and we'd been out staying in a very nice hotel. We've been sort of wined and dined and treated incredibly well by various, um, sort of blue chip farm companies who we were bidding for business with. And, um, it just hit me one day. I don't quite know what happened, but II walked into the, um, exhibition hall and in America, these conferences are just on a different level. Um And there's, you know, all these sort of crazy, um really expensive looking things so fundamentally and phenomenally different to what I faced each day back in the NHS. Um And for some reason, I just sort of, it hit me that the reason that these guys had all these fancy things was because it was kind of our health system's money. And II discovered at that moment that purpose was important to me. Um And I, that was an epiphany moment for me and I sort of the la the last three days that we were out there. Um I really struggled even to kind of eat the complimentary food and continue sort of joshing around with the um the various bids that we were doing. And II kind of felt really, really mixed. And at that point, I'd sort of, I was approaching the end of my public health training and um II was kind of expected to take partnership in this, um, psych on firm, which is what had been sort of offered or suggested to me. And, um, I was chatting with my mentor then my educational supervisor, Doctor Jamie Ferguson, um, whose photograph I couldn't find, he's, he's not on the internet. So I'm photograph on, um, but he was really, really good and he knew exactly, I would say nicely how to manipulate me. But he told me, he said, Richard, um, uh, if you don't apply for a consultant job, people will think you weren't up to it. And II had to prove myself. So I applied for a consultant job and I found a consultant job just to please Jamie. I applied for it. And, um, bizarrely they appointed me, um, I don't quite know why. Um, it was a difficult time going into local government. This is 2015. So it's kind of a year after the major austerity decisions have kind of kicked in departments are being def off, essentially defunded. Um, and closing down. And II picked up my blackberry cos, that's what we used to use back then. Um, in government service. And, um, the second email I got the first day I actually got the blackberry, um, whilst we're shutting down the department and you're all effectively on notice and, um, really, really dispiriting. And I thought, well, that, that's good. That's made up my decision for me. I'm gonna go back to, um, industry. But, um, of that came something actually, really amazing. I spent um, yes, the departments I was in shut down and we formed two new departments, one for each of the two bar that we were working with. And II think actually, in retrospect, even though I wasn't ex um expecting it, that was actually some of the most fulfilling professional years of my life. Building up a new team, as I said, II, like building things, um working with incredibly dedicated, um, competent people. That's, um, a photograph of some of the team members. Um, an RF two whose name I now can't remember there. Uh, one of our registrars, um, sitting in, I've, I've cut out the alcohol cos they were a public health and I used to run the alcohol service in the borough that we're sitting in. Er, so you have to be a bit careful about street drinking, um, in that context. So that was a wonderful, um, few years and then other bits you don't need to ride alongs with the police down in Brixton and, and Lambeth. That's, um, me on the right on my drive rounds, um, on, on Friday evenings, which was good, fun looking at sort of licensing and, and the impacts there. Um, and then I put a random, er, this is the, the, I don't think it has a completely big viewership but our world is one news based out in Delhi. Um, I've done a few interviews, um, for them and, um, I actually went back. Um I've sort of double run, my ideal job would have been to sustain some work in local government with an academic career. But the, you know, the challenge is that you sort of have to choose and, and that is um rather frustrating sometimes. But I spent, I wasn't willing to go into academia fully, so I spent a bit longer in, um south than perhaps I probably should have done. Um, but then when the pandemic hit, II kind of, I went back there for the first two years of the pandemic and that was a really tough time. But, um, I, anyone who trains in public health, um, it's not quite the right corollary of war but, you know, it's your war. You want to be back doing something for the, for the pandemic. Um, and that's me with, um, my eldest son on the, well, my, my elder son is in the top left corner there. Um, I put my, that was my, um, respirator for my F FP three, respirator from, er, the days of swine origin influenza, which was, um, the potential pandemic on the horizon. When I was a junior doctor in the hospital, I gave him my, um, face covering and we had a bit of a chuckle in early January 2020. Not, not, not knowing quite how it was all gonna, um, pan out. Um, but I think the other thing I'd sort of also say to all of you is that your objectives to change as you get older, at least they have with me. And I think with the arrival of my first son who's on the right of the group photograph um on the right that, that, that's my son Thomas. Um And my, my youngest son, Matthew, uh um my wife who's um a consultant at Saint George's for anyone who's at Saint George's do go, do go and give her the run around in the audio Fator department to get the opportunity for medical student. Um This does change and, and certainly actually having some flexibility um means that you have to Reprioritize certain things. And, and the other thing, like I said, I like building the, everything I took up during the pandemic is woodwork. So that's my, um it's a desktop that I built and, and you can see actually that I think it's the same desktop just behind me over here um in the shop. So again, sort of um finding the other things cos life is more than about just work I think is also something that I think I get the sense. Gen Z are kind of maybe ahead of where us millennials um potentially are on that. But um that's another important thing to factor in when you're talking about careers. It's not just about um your, your, your natural ambition and that ambition I think does potentially change. So, so what happened? What what happened after that? Well, I, I'd spent how long, three, three years in local government at that point, almost full time, I'd always had a couple of academic sessions where I did a bit of teaching at Imperial and at the University of Hertfordshire. Um, and then towards the end of 2017, so about two years into the job, I was sort of had conversations and there was, well, there may, there may be a role that needs filling. Um And I kind of said, I'm, I'm not really ready for that yet. I still have, you know, a tour of duty to deliver in local government. I sort of built a team I wanted to kind of work that through. But then by the end of sort of 2018, you know, circumstances changed naturally, the, the thought of a new challenge was, was quite attractive. Um And so on the back of kind of a whole load of educational development. And these are kind of, some of my colleagues that I've worked with in, in education over the years. These are the seem from imperial. Um I sort of got interested in this sort of side of education. I def definitely never considered myself. I still don't consider myself an educationist, I don't think. Um, but I sort of, um, took on this, this is an interesting role. I'm not sure whether you can see this. Um, you know, this is some of the work that we've been doing. So this is a new module that we've got in the undergraduate program at Imperial in the medical school um called lifestyle medicine and prevention and just working with creatives, kind of developing videos and kind of um storylines and archetypes and kind of innovative learning resources. So um this was a really fun one to go out and shoot on location. I'm in the background of one of these. Um And oh, I'm hoping there's no first year students from Imperial on this. But what they only realized in the last episode is um Priya, who's our protagonist there um is actually a junior doctor. And so trying to address some of his population health, um learning elements of lifestyle, medicine and workforce resilience has been um one of the pieces of work that we've done. So that's an example of kind of the more creative aspects of my job, let's move on. So, um like I said, it started off with kind of a couple of academic sessions that were focused mostly on teaching. And then at the end of 2018, I came over to Imperial full time and sort of still did two sessions in um public health service. But the, the challenge is um when you've got politicians calling you at strange hours of the day, um and you've got services that you're commissioning and budgets that you're holding it's very difficult to do um do jobs well. And so you end up in a sort of challenge of, well, what do you want to do better? Um, but, you know, the moments that I've had, um, as an academic and as an educational person and, you know, this was my first cohort of students up here and they graduated last year. And actually, um, that's their first evening in freshers week where we all had dinner together. Um, and that's Lillian who isn't in that photograph for some reason. Um But she uh graduated last year and actually seeing people through is really um really great. And I think the other thing for those of you, considering a public health or global health career. Yy, you may at some point now have to decide how much are you willing to give up in terms of your clinical career and your clinical identity? Yes, public health is a clinical career theoretically, but we don't really see patients. And I think for me, the students sort of become that sort of personal connection that um you know, the people who you sort of do see as people that you can relate to. Not quite patients, but they're the closest thing that you have to it often in a sort of a policy based career. So what do I, what do I do now? Well, um I spend most of my time doing management. Um and I II say that with a hint of sadness, I don't particularly enjoy management, but um management is kind of the price I pay to do the teaching and to do have the flexibility that I enjoy. So here we've got a load of um uh GP tutor colleagues. Um So up until last year, I was the deputy head of year for the first two years of the medical school. In addition to other responsibilities, here's my um LM A lifestyle medicine and prevention teaching team from last year. Um So you have great fun there. I think um the other thing I'd consider is in terms of the, the division of your time, no career guys is going to be ideal. Um At least I don't think it is. I think all the options that you have are a balance. There are a trade off between the stuff that you really love and the stuff that you have to do in order to do the stuff that you really love. Um And for me, the kind of the leadership role, the outward facing stuff I don't particularly care for that. Um It's nice meeting people, but I don't like having to sell courses and, and all the rest of it and sort of show up and be nice to people because you've had the, you know, bad week or something like that. But here are some, you know, nice ni nice moments that you've had in the last year. Um So I think this is Samira. Um I met her at a conference and she had done, she's one of the 30,000 students who've done my online um mass online open course. And she's a medical student from Egypt who came out to me and sort of said hello. And that she'd watched all my, my videos and my courses on the Coursera platform as a tragic plug. Um So that was, that was a really nice moment. Um Here I am I with some of last year's BSE students. Um And at a career fair, talking about the global health. And here's me with my boys um at our annual outreach event, um The Great Exhibition Road Festival that takes place every June um over at South Kensington. Um You know, and those are probably the more positive moments. Um Here's what we did last week, um Royal Abot Hall for graduation. Here's our new class of 2023. Um Down here, I'm not sure if any of them are on the call they might be. Um But I think this sort of thing around what is global health. There's still a lot of controversy. At least my sense is there's a lot of controversy over what global health really is. There's people who sort of say, well, it shouldn't exist at all. It's sort of a remnant of um fastigial coloniality. Um There are other people who sort of jump right into it. Um I still feel a little bit of an imposter, I think in terms of global health, I certainly identify as a public health specialist. I, you know, I am confident that I can, I can do public health pretty well, I would think. But this idea of global health has been really much more of a transition um to me and, you know, one of the things I used to get picked up on in my, um public health teaching historically was that it was very UK centric, it was very public health. Um And not about that, it's sort of international dimension. But I think um over the last several years, I've sort of um moved a little bit more from that exclusive public health remit into a more global health um space. And that's working with new people. It's meeting new people, it's hearing new things, it's listening to, you know, one of my favorite days on the program is actually the global health um research presentation. So I get to learn um new stuff and, and the opportunities that aca academia opens up in terms of um global footprint opening doors. Um fostering collaborations is really fantastic. I learned so much from that and, and for me discovering new things, learning new things really is kind of the thing that gets me out of bed um in the morning. So, um very finally, before we sort of, um uh I hand back what are my reflections on kind of a career in public health slash global health or public health brackets, global health? Um It's hugely flexible and I love the fact that I can sort of pursue personal interests as an academic. We have an incredible level of autonomy. Um And that's not something that you get in every public health space. So, um you know, it's one of the things I often get asked by medical students is well, um is it less stressful in public health? And, and there's kind of a mixed answer that I give to that, you know, in terms of this idea of work life balance. II always worry people when they say work life balance, that the implication is you don't work very hard. We work really hard. OK. So, I mean, this morning, I was up um before five o'clock, um I wrote these slides on the chin to work this morning and I sort of, you know, was at my desk by 7 15. So we do work still quite long hours. Um So, but I'm in control of my diary, which I think is the big difference that flexibility, the ability Wednesday and Thursday, I collect the kids from school cos it's my wife's clinic days. Um That's really nice, but the pressure is also slightly different. Yes, you don't have a patient going off um at 3:30 p.m. on a Friday, which is what I always remember happening in hospital medicine. Um But then because we're all quite sort of um not unique, but we're quite specialized. It means that even if you are on holiday. You, you will get calls from time to time during the pandemic. I think the few, couple of weeks of the whole day I got over the two years, I still call two or three times a day with various queries. So it's a slightly different type of pressure. Um, but it's flexible and the locus of control is on you, which is really nice. Um, I love being able to build and shape things, you know, that for me is the idea to sort of look at something and go, we've built that. Um increasingly, I like the concrete stuff like the desk, but actually building systems, building processes. Um you know, the pandemic was an incredibly, I mean, it was awful for most people don't get me wrong, it was awful for many people. Um but being given resource and the, you know, the endorsement say, just go ahead and do things that was actually quite liberating I II actually, that was that those are the moments of the pandemic that were actually positive experiences. Um Despite it overall being so challenging, um I think that the scope of work sort of um moving towards that sort of global dimensions as you begin to kind of understand and experience more and more you can begin to make those connections and realize the bit that you learned in this space can go um somewhere else. But you also have to maintain that humility that in global health. It's very difficult to genuinely be an expert in a particular context. Um And I think my tendency is I like to go broad and understand loads of things. Um But equally, I have colleagues who really want to go absolutely narrow and deep into something um exclusive. And again, you might have to think a little bit around what sort of, what peaked your curiosity and what's gonna sustain you over potentially decades of work. What are the challenges um public health has historically been lower prestige than many other specialties? I think that's changing. We're a lot more competitive now in terms of entry than we used to be. Um if you're going into public health training and you want an international development or global health job, um There are consultant jobs in those um but there aren't many of them and if it is that you do want to be working in humanitarian assistance or international development, there are other ways of going into those um pathways. Um And I think um there's another challenge around where you get that global health experience to begin with and that's very difficult because conventional training programs, um what we do in public health training is very UK centric and that is a bit of a challenge. Um But for me as a sort of an academic, public health person now, which I still feel a bit awkward saying um Well, I love not having a public sector laptop. That's a, that's a great liberty for me. Um, I have far less bureaucracy. Sometimes I even actually panic that there isn't quite enough, um, governance around decision making. Um, and I still miss doing some proper public health work and that's been a bit of a challenge for me over the last two years and sort of stepping back from the pandemic. I still want to sort of get my hands dirty and do some practical stuff. Um In the final to the minute, I'll just very quickly um flag uh public health training. If anyone is interested, it's a five year training program, entry into training is from f two or later. Although a lot of people do come in from post college membership elsewhere. Um The first two years or three years of training is quite um sort of formulaic, you're going to work in local government in health protection. Um And then you might have six months at the end to choose something different, including possibly an academic placement. And the great thing about training is phase two where you get to choose any placement basically in the country, which is brilliant loads of ability to kind of get through different opportunities and see different organizations and understand things. Um But there's two quite difficult exams on the way. So um along the way, so just do do flag that but very happy to answer any questions that you have later on. Um I know I've got to move on and make way for Carwin. Um, but that is kind of where I'm up to and, and the final remark I would just make is that maybe, maybe this career guidance wasn't as bad as I thought it was the fact that we sort of got journalism, broadcasting, environmental science, psychology. Um I'd argue that actually I do incorporate elements of all of these things or skills from all of these groups um into my job in global health now. So maybe I shouldn't be as critical about global health as I historically am. That's it. Uh Back over to you, Charles. Yeah, thank you for that. Um Richard, it was so interesting. Um We really, really enjoyed that. Um We'll just move on because we'll be doing questions right at the end. But thank you again, so much. That was so interesting. Uh So I'm very happy now to introduce our second speaker for the um Doctor Car Ho so doctor who has degree in medicine, philosophy and medical education. He also holds a phd in law. Doctor Hooper has worked at Saint George's for over 13 years and has several different roles at the university. He's currently the head of the graduate school and the head of the Section for Humanities Ethics, Law and Global Health and the course director for the M SE in Global Health doctor, who was also trustee of the Institute of Medical Ethics and he was the founding chair of the Institute of Medical Ethics Research Committee. He also participates in a variety of public engagement activities and he regularly gives interviews on the radio and television in both the Welsh and English. So, thank you so much, Doctor and I'll hand it over to you. Now. I apologize. You may be muted if you were saying something. Is that better? Yes, I can put he perfectly now. Thank you, marvelous. And can you see the slides? Yes, we can. Perfect. Thank you very much uh for the invitation to speak. Um It's a pleasure being here. Um And uh I think I share many of the reservations uh with the first speaker in terms of II, I've always been rather skeptical of uh career advice in general. Um And, you know, long, long have I been a personal tutor to uh medical students? Um And part of that role as many of, you know, is to try and get guidance on careers and it's a bit I find most difficult and I'm least uh sure about nevertheless, speaking about my own career, hopefully is gives you an insight into what I've been doing and what I'm up to and maybe some of it will resonate with you and may, maybe of some relevance, um which shall see, I have taken a rather um divergent path, I guess in my career as um as the introduction sort of suggest. So I'm not, uh I think if, if you are, um, a medical student. Probably my journey is, um, will be unusual from your perspective. Um, and I don't expect many people were following quite the same path. Nevertheless, one of the things I think matters in, in, in thinking about careers is thinking is being open minded and I'll come back to that at the end and, and changing, changing career paths. If you think that, that what you're, what you're doing isn't right for you. I have better, I think too much time in a way with, with people who are not in the right profession for the right reasons and, and, and that's often because of the pressures they feel under to be in, in the career that in the, in the profession that they're in and it's a, it's a, it's a difficult and problematic thing. So hopefully, um, you might take gasps of horror as you listen to some of the choices I made. But hopefully, um, the, the open model that I had will, will, will be something that you reflect on. So, um I II do have, I did try and construct a, um, a slide as well. Um I read about um, what my daily, what my week looks like but it, but it's, it's hopeless, um, hopelessly difficult to do. And, um, in a nice way actually because, um, where I've got, I'll explain how I got to where I got to in a minute, obviously, but where I am now I have several different kinds of roles even though I work within uh full time within an institution as an academic. So my primary day to day job, sadly doesn't have that much to do with uh global health directly anymore because I'm the head of the graduate school at Saint George's. So what that means in practice is that I'm responsible for all of the postgraduate taught and post graduate research students and courses at Saint George's. And that's quite a range and quite a wide portfolio from courses like M SE and physiotherapy, for example, through to M Dres programs, those are post graduate research degrees taken by doctors, um specifically, um and an awful lot in between some of which is biomedical science orientated, some of which is humanity orientated. So I I'm less involved in the, in the day to day really uh delivery of of courses and, and, and sort of divorce partly from global health these days, but I shall return to it one day, I'm sure. Um So that's my main role. It's very managerial. Um an awful lot of showing my face as, as the previous speaker, sort of alluded to when it comes to sort of the senior leadership aspect of things. Um I sit on the senior leadership group at the university and report directly into the Vice chancellor and deputy vice chancellor. So it's, it's uh it's a strange kind of world to live in actually. Um in some ways, uh, quite alien, uh, because it's not what I always feel about it is that the people in these roles are fundamentally academics, a lot of them clinicians too because ST George's is a health care medical school primarily. But we have all these academics who were trained to be academics and yet we seem to spend an awful lot of our time being managers when strictly speaking, none of us have MBA or, or even that way of managerial training. And yet there we are and often doing things that have very little to do with education or research in a direct sense. Um However, I II am still actively involved in teaching and, and research and other um the public engagements and other kind of activities. I'm a course director, for example, for health, I'll talk about that um in a little bit. Um I'm also um quite heavily involved in doctoral training, partnerships that relate to global health and I'll say a bit more about that later as well. So here goes, um just checking the slides have moved on cos just check that, that's the case. Can you see the next slide? Can I just check f thank you. That's the only time I'll do that. I just want to check. So, um where it all began for me, um my life to start with, but interesting global health was um was it back in Wales where I'm from? And Swansea where I was born. Um and I said, circular part of my life is that I was invited to be an external examiner at Swansea um for their medical program seven years ago now. And uh I was born in the hospital as a join, joins that university. And my, my dad actually worked as a lecturer at Swansea University. So I had a, I had a lovely little moment of uh of uh completing a circle there. So um I grew up in Wales, um proud of that and speak Welsh. And as I was mentioned in the introduction, do quite a lot of public engagement in Welsh as much as I can anyway, um including in global health. Interestingly. So I was heavily influenced, I think that knows to me by my father who died when I was quite young, but he was a lecturer in in engineering um at the university. And the things that I think impacted my career development and partly impacted why I went into global health. Um was that I was very lucky as a child because my dad traveled a lot as an academic, like we do as conferences and back in the day um which probably isn't allowed anymore, but back in the day, you um academics could kind of trade in their rather expensive business class flights for economy class flights. And so we often get, my little family would often get taken with my dad. And so I essentially traveled the world as a youngster, which was pretty unusual for someone growing up in fairly rural Wales. And it made a big difference to me because Wales, certainly, back at the time, back in those days was not particularly diverse in many ways. And it was sort of unusual if you'd been born in England and moved in, never mind anything else. Um, and so if I hadn't had that exposure to the world, it, cultures and people and variety, I don't actually think I would have been inherently interested in global health. But by the time I went to university, I was already primarily focused on what was called international health at the time and global health. And it was to do with that upbringing, really just getting to see the world. It's also influenced um of course, by having a, a lecturer for a father and a teacher for a mother. So it's not massively surprising perhaps. So I'm heavily into education. Um And I think the other thing on a on a more sort of personal and sort of poignant note. Um I think the, the the experience with the sorrow associated with, with having to um experience sort of death at a young age, I think influenced me and made me want want to study medicine. Um I think it obviously in a terrible way, but in a silver lining kind of way enabled me to see the value of health care. I don't know. And in a simplistic way. I kind of wanted to help people, I think partly because I've been exposed to um a very difficult sort of time. So that was my potted history of my childhood. At 17, I was in a similar boat in the sense that I had some careers advice and I have no idea why I really wanted to do. I knew I couldn't be an engineer because my maths is terrible. Um I was very interested in the law. Um I, and I was interested in medicine primarily because of its varieties, to be honest. So I thought that's the thing that I find most interesting about medicine is just the sheer variety within it as a, as a, as a student. But also, of course, later on, and I was awfully torn between law and, and medicine um experience and work experience on both. Couldn't decide what to put on my UCA form and all that, all that jazz. But anyway, medicine run out in the end. Um And actually, um medicine was the first step in quite a long and complicated educational process for me. So um I do actually remember my medical school interview at Queen Mary. I was asked you, why do you want to do medicine? And you know, it's the question you always get asked, isn't there? But well, and actually II talked about global health and I said, well, I wanted to, I wanted to do, I wanted to work overseas. You know, I talked a bit about my experiences of, of traveling and the like, and they were actually quite critical, I mean, they let me in so I'm not really mind but they were a little bit critical of that sort of saying, well, sh they actually questioned, um, should, shouldn't you want to work in England for the NHS or in the UK for the NHS? Um What is this thing about international Health? Which I was quite surprised that local people would sort of see it as a virtue rather than, um, potential vice. I think things have changed radically since then. Um, and as I say, I don't mind too much cos they let me in, so I'm not complaining. Um, but anyway, I, II studied medicine at, at Queen Mary wh in London as it was called then, um, er, which then got merged with, with Queen Mary and we did very much. But, um, was cognizant quite early on that I was interested as I was at a level really in lots of different things and I was going to struggle, uh, if I was just going to focus on 11 sort of discipline if you like for, for the rest of my life. So I was very lucky cos I got to, um, leave Queen Mary for a year and go to King's. Uh, and King's had set up this brand new and rather bizarre sounding, uh, integrated BC and philosophy with biomedical science. There wasn't really any biomedical science there. It was mostly philosophy and I thought, well, great. I get to spend a whole year philosophizing, whatever that means didn't really know. But it sounded fun and it was, I, it totally transformed my life doing that into place of PSE because II um loved it in a way that I didn't met. So medicine I liked, it was interesting and challenging and, and, and, and made me grow up fast but it wasn't um wasn't as intellectually stimulating for me as I thought it would be. Um, and philosophy was just, was, was um perfect for me really? So, um I, there in some ways that, er, caused horror and constellation amongst um some of my, um my personal, my people who are personal tutors to me and, er, because I was very clear having done the BCI didn't really want to do medicine anymore. Um So II completed the degree because I thought it was II probably should but II didn't, II already knew I was going, going to go down a different academically and in some more of the humanities. Um So it was horror all around family, friends, bank manager, that kind of thing. Everybody was thinking, what are you doing? How can you possibly leap from medicine into philosophy of all things? But this is one of those career moments for me where I was quite clear about it. It wasn't that difficult. I was open minded about it. And I thought, well, I'm not, I won't be happy at a career in medicine. At least in it's ju traditional sort of practice form. I knew I wanted to run health care and I was still interested in global health. But, um, you know, I, and so I was brave, I suppose in making that decision, but so true, true to myself in a way because I thought this wasn't for me and it's, it's better to go start again almost um and explore different avenues. So I did a diploma at uh at night school in, at Birkbeck or whilst I was doing all manner of other things to pay my way while teaching on the side, did, did an Ma in philosophy at UCL which, which I loved. It was my favorite year. All of this um II met some great people there absolutely massively stimulating time. Um But all the way through global health was taking over a lot of what I would study for. The, for example, within the ma was global health focused at least where it could be. Um uh I later did a postgraduate certificate in education and um and the big switch really was, was the, the big le into law. So I did a phd in law at Kings um looking at a mixture of health um legislation and a lot of philosophy around concepts of free will and the like and their role in in in, in healthcare and behavior. So super, I love the whole thing. Um, we finally called it a day in 2013. Have to want too many years as a, as a student ever since the course II haven't done anything formal but I've like, we all do e learning and I love learning aspect of things and part of the reason why I like academy. So all the way through all of that, er, which does seem chaotic looking back. And I think to echo again, the first speaker, there's nothing linear. Well, it definitely isn't for me, but there isn't really anything linear about many people's careers. Um Things take twists and there are twists and turns and quite what happens so often a lot to do with luck and being influenced by particular people at particular times. Um But all the way through that chaotic as it may seem unifying factor, I was always trying to bring what I was doing back to global health and I didn't really shape fully at the time. But the reason why that was possible is precisely because global health is such an interdisciplinary subject. So I've studied lots of different disciplines but they could all come together uh in global health. And of course, there are many other disciplines that are highly relevant too. Um I just recruited a new colleague who's an anthropologist, for example, and she works in Global Health. And um you know, so, so health is is a sort of open that in different, different fields makes it. So I do love going to global health conferences where you bring such a wide variety of people, activists, clinicians, uh lawyers, you, you name it um or thinking about this complicated subject. Um So the hard thing for me really was to know well, what, how, how do I, how do I make a career in a life out of global health? Do what, what do I try and focus on education research? Do I go back into practice in some way? What should I do? Um And I think it's worth um I just what it is for me anyway, it because it is such a formative experience. So in doing my medical degree, as, as I know that many of you will know. Um yy, I had the opportunity to do an elective. Um and I went to Ghana um spent a long time out there. Uh It was my first proper exposure I suppose to um global health uh certainly in a, in a low, low, low, middle income country. It almost convinced me actually to, to sort of practice clinically and global health in that kind of environment. Um As an exhausted young looking me in my back in there, I just found pictures earlier on today and had an elephant I saw. Um but, but the more important bit is that um I mean, it, it didn't convince me but it, but it stayed with me that experience because it was phenomenal and it was scarring and I was wildly unprepared for it. And it's one of the critiques I have of electives. So not long ago, I had a phd student who was working on the ethics of electives. And one of the, one of the questions we were asking really is, should anybody actually go on electives? Because, because you're never as a student, never more vulnerable and as patients on the receiving end, never more vulnerable probably. And host institutions critique elected quite heavily as well, particularly in certain locations. And II don't, I don't take the view that elective should be prohibited. Um It may hugely influence my own life. So I think it was an important and formative experience for me, but preparation is absolutely essential. Um particularly if you're going to do a global health type elective. And that's part of the reason why quite literally decades later, I worked with some colleagues at King's to put together this mo future then and I know many people across the UK will access this as preparation for their elective. And it reflects some of our personal experiences of being put in with very little preparation, training, ability to contact any. So, um so it didn't quite take me down the sort of practicing clinical global health route, but it had a big impact on me and I literally never forgot it. Um So y yy years and years later, hopefully people benefit from some of the, some of the more difficult sides of my experience, Ghana was fantastic, by the way, um One of my favorite countries I've ever, I've ever visited. And uh um but was it was challenging anyway, for me, my big career breakthrough and I was, was um a a found the old letter I received um was in 2009 where I was actually a phd student at the time. Um wondering whether I'd ever stop actually being a student and actually earn some proper money. And then George's appeared. Um So I got a part time fixed term, a fixed term lecturer role in medical ethics and law um at Saint George's, which isn't based in Hyde Park Court anymore. Um We have a long and interesting history. Um and uh and it, and it, I never looked back. So luckily I got the permanent position in, in as a elect of Medical Ethics and law and then moved up and moved across back into global health um slowly but surely. Um I made that little um movement and well, um I say the first task for me, I was employed to be a lecturer of medical Ethics and law and that is what I was, I focused on, primarily on, on medical ethics and law, health care ethics and law, but all along. Um right in the beginning and I was open about it in my interview again, you know, global health matter to me, global health ethics and law matter to me. And I really wanted to increase global health and education and curriculum. At the time when I started, there wasn't much um monitoring the global health here and there in the medicine program. Um but it wasn't even labeled as such. So II just I said, right, well, first things, first is to try and increase global health. Uh a little bit more growth in two particular courses or three. Um the integrated BSC, the BSE Biomedical Science, which is shared with the I BSC at Saint George's and the medicine program. Really luckily, I there was some medical students and biomedical science students who were really keen on this. In fact, they were pushing us frankly and it's because they were so active and involved that I actually got to do what I got to do. So they really were arguing for more global health. They were quite frustrated. They were how little there was in the curriculum. I channeled their energy and worked with them and we created a new problem by tens that had global health in it. We made sure there were some learning outcomes associated with it. Um boring all learning outcomes right now, but they are rather critical uh created some lectures um that I've got to deliver, produce elective preparation resources that I just describe. And most importantly, argument got it into the ass because if it is not in the assessment as every student knows. Um the probability that he will be learned is much lower. Step one was complete, well, not complete, never complete but was was achieved. Um Step two was to create entire undergraduate modules and pathways in the indicated BSE course, which we did um highlighted them here. So we created a whole slew of um global health modules and it became part of the integrated program at Georgia's very popular and also was very popular among biomedical scientists. That was great. Um Whilst that was going on, I was trying to create global health, particularly global health ethics and law more nationally in the sort of medicine curricula across the UK. And I worked heavily, I still do with the Institute of Medical Ethics with limited success, I would say in trying to get global health more heavily integrated, particularly with ethics and law. But nevertheless, it's something that's dear to my and I do tend to feel because that's where I've been for 14 years. But I do, I do want a lot of a lot of what, what we do to be to be something that all medical students experience across the UK and elsewhere. So, um and whilst that was also going on, I took on several external examiner roles. One of the best things you can ever do because you've done so much. I mean, in theory, as an external examiner, you were there to review the curricula and assessments of other courses. But in reality though, you do that, you learn as much, if not more as you give. So, watching what other people and learning what other people do is massively massively rewarding and interesting, particularly the Swansea one, of course, because as I said, that's how it took me home. Um, anyway, having done all of that, what I was really keen to do was to create an entire MSC or several MSC S in global health. It took a decade for perseverance is one of those career things that matters. You know, you just have to keep plugging away, sometimes meeting resistance. But if you keep going and you're passionate and you're dedicated, you will often not always but will often get there and how joyous it was when, when I managed to, you know, launch this recruit the first cohort and that was 67 years ago. Now it's a very successful postgraduate program. Um fantastic students, wonderful colleagues. Um It's, it's a, it's attractive to clinical um to clinicians. We've had a lot of uh clinicians, lots of different backgrounds, nursing, medicine. Um We've had people who are soldiers, engineers, lawyers, journalists, um all manner of people come and do this course um from o lots of overseas uh students as well. Such a fantastic thing to be involved with and probably this thing will most uh this is the thing I'm most proud of. I think in terms of the things that I've created, feels like my baby. I should have given it up a long time ago. I'm not really meant to be their course director and then the graduate school at the same time. Um, but I just can't cos, er, I would lose my global health heart if I did that. So, um, still the course director for this. Uh, and it's a great program. I'm not here to plug it. So, don't worry. But uh just a little bit of information about it. Uh It's quite varied, you know, lots of interesting, um, different types of modules, lots of options. So most, there's a couple of core modules for people get to choose to really make your own degree, sort of thing. Lots of new modules like the one in migration and health, which seems really relevant at the moment. Um Lots of humanities and ethics and law, lots of humanitarian action, um and conflict medicine wrapped in there. So if you're interested, you go look at it. That's the end of my plug for my own course. Um One of the joys of the jobs that I do is the fact that, um, well, one of, one of the things I do, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a sort of department head of sorts and so I get to recruit and manage and work with an amazing team of people. Um, some of them are listed here. So please to go in, have a look at these people, they have extraordinary lives and contribute so much to global health in all manner of different ways. And it's, it's such a joy being in that position of the person who gets to recruit these people and work with them and learn from them. It's, it's a really, it's a, it's a joy. It's something I never really thought I would want to do. But being a sort of team leader or a department leader is, is, is, is a lot of fun in the department as we call it, it is holt Department of Humana and Global Health. Um More recently, I've become a sort of senior leader, I suppose within the university sector as the head of the graduate school, to the things I've done in that role that are related to global health, which brings joy to my heart is that I'm the coa of a doctoral training partnership between London and the school of he and tropical medicine in ST George's. Um that's not exclusively focused on global health, but one of the four themes is global health. So it's a phd program um funded by the Medical Research Council and being co-chair of that gives me fantastic opportunity to, to work with people, but also to, to lead staff and students who are focused partly on global health. Um And at the same time, I'm a, I'm one of the training leads for a Wellcome trust funded doctor training partnership, which is exclusively focused on um global health and is, and is actually focused on healthcare professionals. It's healthcare professionals, doctors included who want to do P hds. And it's a great program because it's uh involves um five or six universities in the UK and five partner institutions in Africa. It's a, it's a trail brazer in some ways for global health partnerships and doctoral training level. So it's something I'm really proud to be involved with and really enjoy. I don't like the previous speaker. I don't actually do that much research. Um Really, um but I do a bit here and there. Um I'm, I'm involved in the TT four CL program at the moment, which is a eu funded program looking at treatments for cutaneous leishmaniasis. Um I went to a conference in Ukraine recently that's on the top left there. Um Not actually it was online. So um quite an interesting conference because they had to stop at one point because they lost power because of um missile strikes. But they, they um got over that kept going very impressive, did simultaneous translation from English to Ukrainian, which was phenomenal. Um But one of the things I have enjoyed about my job is the fact that I have managed to travel a lot with the research going to conferences. Um It's not my, I'm not in some ways an academic researcher by any research and imagination, but I still do enough to keep my hand in. I do loads of public engagement. I think it's a really important part of global health, especially because global health isn't necessarily. Um, um, well, I think these plans very different, but until the pandemic struck, it wasn't really featured particularly heavily in the media, global health. And so I felt it was important thing to do. Um, and I did like doing it in, in two languages as well. And my, one of my favorite things to do, um, I've done less of it actually since, since COVID struck. But I think it is a really important part of what local health is about raising awareness. So I probably ran out of time. I think I ran out of time, career advice, er, horribly dangerous territory, as I've said at the beginning. But I attempted to put some pearls of wisdom down, um, earlier on today. So being open minded, being brave almost, uh, if you, if what you're doing isn't right for you, then, then look for other things. Um, it won't always work out but I think it's important to, to try very aware that careers and global health are very varied. Um, and the range of organizations you can work for are incredibly varied too. So, you know, it's a good discipline to be in. Even if you are a clinician, big clinician, you don't necessarily have to stay in clinical practice policy, might be something you want to go into. I'm not a huge fan of networking. At least not the word but do, critically importantly, your career development is often, is often through networking that you make the connections you need to make that then have a big impact on you. Um As the previous speaker said, it's very difficult this but don't just consider what you value now, but try if you can so imagine what you might be like 20 years from now might be difficult to imagine. I don't think I actually would have imagined any of like now back then. But never mind, ha at least having a think about it matters, particularly thinking about work life balance and the literature and lastly just never forget of luck. I think that, I mean, quite quite how I've ended up in doing all the things I'm, I've done, I'm really not quite sure. Um I would have predicted it and a lot of it has to do with um being in the right place at the right time. I guess this is a simple way of putting it. Um So I hope I have an overrun but um there we go, I hope happy to answer any questions. Of course. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much. That was really enjoyed that. Um We have quite a few questions and um they're mostly directed at both you and Doctor Pinder as well. Um So one question we have is do we think that integrating in global health would be beneficial or would you say it's not necessary. If you're thinking about a career in global health, I would never say anything is necessary. So I II um obviously, it could be very beneficial for you. If you, if you are genuinely very interested in global health and you have the opportunity to take an integrated BSD in that subject, then it's probably a sensible and wise thing to do. But I, what I try and tell medical students generally, especially when they ask me about SSE S and how necessary is it to do an SSE in particular discipline is to say, not, not to worry too much really. Um At this stage, I, you know, be open minded, do different things, explore different things. Um But I guess it stands to reason if you're really interested in the subject and there's a degree in it then then, yeah, that makes sense. That's why I did my indicates degree in philosophy cos it sounded great and interesting and I wanted to have a go at it and look what happened. Um Yeah, that's my take on that. So I think my comment to that. I totally agree with uh with what you said there, Carwin. Um I think there is this kind of tick box culture there in medicine where um is having a degree helpful. And I think there's two ways to look at that. I don't think at any point is having a global health degree or not having a global health degree on your CV, gonna be really of any value in terms of why someone's gonna recruit you into a post necessarily. Um But the process of being on the degree and the experiences that you'll get and the understanding and kind of connections that it might foster. That's what the opportunity is, not the value of having the letters after your name. Um Thank you so much. Um Another question we have is um do you believe that your medical degree had a significant impact on your public health or global health career? And do you view it as a crucial factor when pursuing a career in public health or global health? Um And that's coming from a life sciences student. So, um if you're not familiar, so I wasn't sure if it was just exclusively medical students on the call this evening, but I'm delighted that we've got um maybe a more diverse background. Um Public health is one of the few medical specialties, clinical specialties where um you don't need a medical degree to get into training. So, actually, my registrars and I did train alongside about um it's about 50% medics, 50% people from backgrounds other than medicine. Um And actually I'm just writing a report this uh this evening. Um the other consultant on the call, um the other consultant on the report is not um um a medical er person by background. So public health is quite open minded in that regard, I think on the academic side it's probably slightly more challenging. I think on the academic side having sort of a medical degree. So, sort of being MD does kind of bypass or at least substitute a little bit for a lack of a phd, which I'm not sure if you've noticed, I don't have a phd. Um, it's more difficult, you kind of need to share a credential in some way. So, I think the phd, if you're not from a medical background, um is probably more helpful on the academic side, but in um you know, day to day public health, um it doesn't matter at all. Um doctor, anything to add. No, not, but I think questions are quite primarily directed at Richard. But um no, not, not, not particularly, I think just quick thing I guess about academia generally, it, it does make a bit of a difference actually if you're coming into academia from a healthcare background versus other disciplines. So often, often my colleagues don't have p hds but they come, they, they're nurses or physios or doctors and their expertise in their clinical area is, is more than sufficient. So, um that's slightly anomalous in a way. Um um but it's uh it's worth noting that. Yeah, there's no, no, no further comment. Great. Thank you. Um Another question we have is that um both of you spoke a bit about however time priorities change with family, Children, et cetera. How would you recommend narrowing our scope now or ruling out careers which may not be compatible with having a family or just choosing what we enjoy without thinking about, about the less concrete aspects of the future? Oh, dear. Um, well, I don't have a family. I have a cat right here. Uh, he may have just seen so it's slightly diff, it's slightly different from me perhaps. But that's a very difficult question. And I II, how, how do you think forward, you know, decades in advance? How do you even know what it is that you're going to want decades in advance? Some, some of you, of course, I realize might have a very definitive sense of what your, your personal life will or should be like, um, I don't think I ever really did. So I, on a very personal note just tended to follow my heart and interest without paying too much, um, to what that would look like and probably is a good thing for me because I never would if I am. And I think if I try to second guess that I'm not, I'm not entirely sure if you've made the right decision. So that's an exceptionally personal question in terms of not in a bad way, but in terms of how you're meant to how you're meant to make these decisions. Um, a word of slight warning from someone who's probably slightly older than many of you is that it is hard to know. I mean, you, you do change as a person, your priorities, change your values change a bit and sometimes in unpredictable way. So, overthinking, it might be rather, rather problematic. Says the man with no dependence other than the cat. So I'm gonna leave it there. Um I've slightly lost track of the question on that one. We, we, we, we, we have two cats as well and they're pretty demanding. So, um, yeah, um, I think it, it's down to, um, I, II wouldn't be ruling things out as a medical student. Um, because, um, you know, and certainly, you know, I speak to a lot of medical students on a sort of an almost daily basis. It's pretty grim in the NHS right now. Um, I'm very confident that will get better because, you know, the, you know, in, in intensive care, we talk about the idea that the patient will declare themselves they'll go one way or the other. And I think the NHS is in a similarly precarious, um, moment. So, um, you know, the, the, the things that we kind of heuristically kind of predict, you know, we, we see people who are in the senior jobs and we go, do we, do we like them as a person, do we like their lifestyle? Do we sort of, um, are we willing to commit and sustain the challenges that they face? Um, and I think a lot of it just will be luck as to who you sort of bump into for me. You know, I've given you photographs of the people who sort of shaped and the decisions I've made and each of them, um, you know, you don't hold half the guy I want to be just like them, but you sort of pick out the things that you like about their career and you sort of try and adapt it. But, um, you know, the key thing is trade off is that, you know, I think Kwin, you were saying similar things in terms of the management is kind of not what we necessarily enjoy, but that's the price we pay to do the other fun bits. And so I think any of you sort of like looking at stuff and going well, I don't like that bit of the job. Um, that's not a reason to say you don't want to do the job. You've got to figure out how much of that are you willing to accept? Because everything is kind of slightly imperfect. So I'd say don't be closing doors at the stage of your career. But as Kwin says, you can kind of follow your gut a little bit. I definitely know there were certain things I didn't want to do as a medical student and they mostly held out. But it's kind of, you know, the experiences I've always had, have been where you go into something and you kind of have quite low expectations and then it kind of exceeds expectations and life is about that whole thing around. It's not so much as whether something's objectively good or bad, it's kind of what you thought it was going to be and how it transpired. So at least there's been my experience. Um Thank you both so much. I think that's all the time we have for um questions um today, but if either of you are happy to be contacted by any of the means, um please do put your details in the chat or I can put them as well if you send them to me. Um And then anyone who wishes can um contact you if you're happy for them to do so. But thank you both so much. Again, it's been really, really interesting. Um Two talks, a really interesting um Q and A session at the end and I think we all really, really learned a lot. Thank you so much for both of you for giving up your time listening and accepting our invitation. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Um We're gonna have a short global health quiz now for anyone who to win a 25 lbs in voucher, um Richard and Carwin, if you'd like to stick with that, you're more than welcome as well. I'll stick around and listen. Um So if any was here in our previous week and please do remember to use the same username so that we can add the points because of the week, we'll be deciding who has the highest points over the past three weeks and who wins our Amazon voucher. Um We'll get started really soon as we're already a bit um over time. So please um, do join as soon as you can. We'll give it another minute or so and then we'll get started. Um in the meantime, whilst you're joining, please do fill in the feedback form that um should appear on your screen. Now, you should also receive an email afterwards requesting you to fill in the feedback form. But filling in the feedback form will allow you to help us to make these events better um and more interesting in the future and will also allow you to get a certificate of attendance. We'll be starting shortly in 1 30 seconds in case anyone else would like to join in the meantime, go get started as we wouldn't wanna finish too late. But anyone else that your code will still be on the screen? So feel free to join at any point during the day. Question one, which of the following pathogens have been successfully eradicated by human efforts. Options are polio, tuberculosis, small pox and cystic cocois. Great. And our correct answer is smallpox, smallpox and rinderpest of the at pathogens to have been successfully eradicated till date in 19 82,011 in specific. And which country has the highest life expectancy in the world. Options are Hong Kong, UK, South Korea and Norway. The correct answer is South Korea, which has a life expectancy of 82 followed by UK 81 to 85 and Norway to 83. Next question, how many Children been vaccinations in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic? All right. Um estimated to have missed out on vaccinations. Options are 28 million, 30 million, 19 million and 23 million. The correct answer is 23 million. Um Question four, how many times greater is the risk of maternal death in Sierra Leone? As compared to Sweden? Options are 302 times greater. 453 times greater. 502 times greater or 401 times greater. Great. And the correct answer is 150 53 times great. Um um S yeah, and actually has the highest rate of mortality in the world followed by the central African replan Sudan. Next question, what was the natal conditions? Ischemic heart disease, diabetes or trachea, bronchus or lung cancers? And the correct answer is ischemic heart disease, heart disease accounted for 16% of all mortalities across the world. And that's followed by stroke in second place and chronic obstructive pulmonary in third place. That does change when we live countries by income with communicable neonatal conditions as being the most common cause in low income. Two countries um question six has exclusively breastfeeding during the first five months. Post birth affect an infant's risk of dying from pneumonia. Reduces six fold, reduces this twofold or reduces 15 fold. And the correct answer is reduces in fold and especially with pneumonia being the leading cause of child mortality and the coverage of Children vaccinated against pneumonia being as low as two thirds. Um, breastfeeding should really be promoted as the method of prevention for death against pneumonia in the world spends the largest share of its GDP on healthcare after North America and Europe. Options are Sierra Leone, Japan, New Zealand and Malawi. Ok. And the correct answer is Malawi. Um Malawi spend 11.38% of the GDP on health care, um which is particularly when remembering that Malawi is the 12th in the world and how many countries are more than 30% of all mortality directly attributed to alcohol consumption? Apologies for the er, on the screen options are 12% 4% 18% or 1%. 0, 12, 18, 4 and one apologies. They're not percentages. So the correct answer is four countries which is quite a difficult question. So countries which is Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, close to 33% or a third of odds are contributed to alcohol consumption. An ultimate question, what was the d in the number of people dying from cancer between 1990 2016? So an increase of 4.5 million decrease, 1 million, 1.1 million, decrease of 2.3 million or increase of 3.9 million. And our correct answer is 4.5 million. Um And uh final question, how many diseases have been so far radic or widely eliminated due to vaccinations options are 14, 8, 28 or 10. Um So it's not just eradication, but it's also widely eliminated. And the correct answer is 14. Um So 14 diseases have been eradicated or widely eliminated and that includes measles, diphtheria, mumps, pitas, rubella, and many others. Great. Thank you so much, everyone for playing. Um Having added up the previous weeks as well as um today's school school. Our winner of um Amazon Voucher is our player with the username. So um um congrats, if whoever you are, if you could and full name in the chart, we can then send you your voucher um by email. So that would be really helpful. Um And thank you so much to everyone for staying up a final few um things to, to say um Thank you so much for joining us. So as we mentioned, um please check our website, sign up to our newsletter and fill in the feedback form to receive your certificate of attendance. But also to help us make these events as good in the future and also follow us on social media. We've got lots of exciting events coming up with talks related to electives, more opportunities to get involved in research and volunteer with us. And of course, our um hackathon that will be occurring in March, which we're very excited about and hoping to see everyone there. So please do stay in touch with us. Um Thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate that. Thank you guys and thank you doctor and to doctor uh doctor for um giving up the evening. We both of your talks. Thank you and very well. I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank Shazia and the rest of the communication team at student me at London, who's put these past three weeks of events together. It's been absolutely brilliant for those of you who are still in attendance. You can go to our middle page and watch the videos from our first week. But just thank you, Shazia, thanks to the communications team, are just really well done overall.