Personal statement

I am interested in undertaking a Ph.D. program in health policy and administration at the UIC’s Department of public health. I was born in a small and backward town in north-west China. My father passed away in a car accident when I was just fifteen years old. At around the same time, my grandfather suffered cerebral hemorrhage and became paralyzed for five years. I still remember the heavy burden his paralysis placed on our family and the desperation it subjected my mother to. From then on, I made a personal decision to learn how to take care of myself so as to relieve my family of some of the burden. This resolve instilled the values of independence, resolution, and perseverance in me. The whole experience made me wish I was a doctor so that I would relieve patients like my grandfather of their pain and help take some burden off their families’ shoulders.
The annual University Entrance Examination is of utmost importance to every Chinese student. However, I got a fair score and got admission into a common university. The major that I was offered admission to was also not the one I had aspired for. I, therefore, became an undergraduate student of health administration. This course was meant to furnish students with skills to comprehend the present theory surrounding healthcare organizations and apply it in solving modern healthcare issues. It was also meant to help those taking it to pinpoint leadership traits unique to medical professionals and determine how the present community and public issues affect leaders in the healthcare sector.

Seeing as I could not change this major, I decided to study hard. My passions became units that dealt with advanced math, algebra, statistics, probability theory, operational research, and epidemiology etcetera. I loved these units since they were quantitative and involved logistics; areas which I could genuinely comprehend. I managed to attain the second highest grade in calculus in my class despite the fact that the exam was so tough that half the class did not make the pass mark. While units like management, organizational behavior, and policy were relatively familiar with the culture and politics of China, I found these courses inane as I had more affinity to the math related majors.
In the third year of my undergraduate study, we took a unit in economics. I found this course rather interesting. After class, I always made sure I spent at least two hours in the library trying to figure out how to draw the economic diagrams and take down the important notes. During some of my routine visits to the library, I found and read an economics textbook authored by Pindyck and Rubinfeld. I found the interesting stories and the thought-provoking economic theories discussed in the book rather interesting. I felt that they could be applied in solving some of the serious problems that we encounter in our day to day lives. My interest in the unit and the research I used to do on it made me feel that the theories that the teacher taught were somewhat inadequate. Going by her responses, some of the questions I posed to her seemed to be beyond her professional experience.
Taking part in many lectures fueled my interest to read books, develop deep thinking about the world, and analyze various situations and matters in our culture. I then made up my mind to be an intellectual and take part in the reading club with several other students who pursued the truth as well from various majors. We read different books in philosophy, psychology and sociology, all which had been translated from English. My avidity to social sciences started getting aroused. However, I gradually realized that the field of social sciences in China is quite backward. The education system encourages the training of skills which could help in developing the economy. It often ignored the liberal arts which were necessary for the cultivation of the human thoughts. Public health was one area that took this aspect into consideration. Therefore, I felt that this was an area I could major in and help in advancing further research on the area within my country.
Motivated by the desire for further study, I enrolled as a graduate student of evidence-based medicine at the Sichuan University; one of the top medical teaching and research institutions in China. In the first year, I joined the office involved with research. I was then assigned the task of filtering articles based on the abstracts and full texts, and extract the necessary data from them. In this role, I earnestly read the papers and tried to put the theory of epidemiology into practice. I also identified and classified the study design of articles. From the second year, I was tasked with conducting a study together with my advisor. The research focused on what the status quo of the patient safety culture in the hospitals in the south-west China was. I designed a cross-sectional study and translated a questionnaire of AHRQ with my partners. I got to read very many papers throughout the experience. These articles really broadened my thinking and the course helped me gain skills in critical appraisal and mastery of information. The Health Policy and Administration course is meant to help an individual learn all healthcare aspects and learn how to effectively manage the problems in the health sector; skills that my undergrad and masters majors already started instilling in me. While still pursuing my graduate study, I also attended seminars which saw me meet a professor from the USF in 2015. He gave a lecture that ignited my desire to study health economics abroad. Health economics are my strongest interests because I believe that they are fundamental to China’s welfare. I prefer to take the program at UIC because the institution is one if the highest ranked universities in the US regarding graduate HPA programs. In addition to your distinguished faculty and advanced courses, your track of health economics particularly attracted me. I’d very much like to join this community and try to utilize the HPA program with passion and creativity for the benefit of the international community.