Over the past academic year, I had the opportunity to work as the student assistant for the Smarter Choices for Better Health initiative. So if you’ve read any of the interviews or event recaps in the newsletter or on LinkedIn, chances are those were written by me. In this short blog I will share a bit the experiences I’ve had here over the past year.
When I first started working at the initiative, I had no experience in an academic setting at all. I had just started the second year of my bachelor’s degree in Health Sciences and knew that health and healthcare were topics I found interesting and important. One of the first things that struck me at the initiative was how many different ways there are to approach the topic of health. Attending events like the PhD and Postdoc Days showed me how not only biology and economics, but also topics like language and philosophy can play huge roles in health research.
What stood out to me most was the way collaboration among researchers from completely different backgrounds went. As a student, I had the naive assumption that most scientists knew most things already; I was pretty sure they were operating on a level far beyond my understanding. But during workshops and panels, I noticed some of them asking questions I had also been wondering about. Some ‘simple’ questions ended up starting some really interesting conversations.
Something that really surprised me was the way researchers have to fight to secure funding for their research. I had always assumed that if an idea was good and important, a university would basically give a researcher funding automatically. The realization that finance is so crucial in basically every facet of the healthcare field has motivated me to pursue a minor in Finance for non-financials, as I now understand the large role the topic will probably play in my own career.
Some of my personal highlights include the interesting interviews I got to do with Anne Hofmann, Hans van Kippersluis and Matthew Robson. Looking back on the past year, I’ve learned a lot. Not just about the way researchers work, but also a whole lot of stuff about what’s going on behind the scenes in the healthcare system. It has been very inspiring to see the way the entire team is dedicated to contributing to a healthy society and I will surely take all of these lessons with me in my future career and hope to do my part in helping build a healthier society for everyone, just like everyone at SCBH.
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