Jennifer Marie J. Yang, MD

I have been meaning to write this piece for a while but life got in the way. We’ll start with the celebration from December 20, 2021:

Somehow the story of my life centers around studying things that are not easily explained, like physiatry and performing arts medicine (in contrast, everyone pretty much knows what a cardiologist does), or even the medical humanities. Add to that this Master of Culture, Health and Medicine degree.

So what is it? The broad curriculum combines medical anthropology with public health, while also incorporating courses in the medical humanities and linguistics in healthcare as part of my degree. You can read more about the curriculum on the university’s information page. Owing to its interdisciplinary nature, it is administered by the College of Health and Medicine and the College of Arts and Social Sciences. And also because it is interdisciplinary, the program’s courses cater to people with different professional backgrounds and students can choose courses to suit your needs. For example, while I chose courses that would help me as a clinician, other classmates who were not (e.g., government workers/public servants, sociologists or development workers) would have a different set of courses on their program list yet still graduate with the same degree. 

Since we are in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be best to explain this with a pandemic-related analogy. A Master of Public Health (MPH) degree deals with how many people have COVID-19 and how will administering X number of vaccinations help in ending the pandemic. In contrast, the Master of Culture, Health and Medicine degree addresses why and how people get COVID-19, how the pandemic affects how they live, view the disease, choose to get vaccinated and all the other “whys” and “hows” surrounding the public health questions. If I wanted to be an epidemiologist and crunch the numbers, I would have enrolled in the MPH program. But I don’t… I struggled through classes in biostatistics and the like; they were not my cup of tea. Apparently I prefer the “soft stuff”: history, culture, the social sciences.

What I did:

1. Read a lot. Every course had assigned weekly readings – typically journal articles or book chapters. Not to mention I also took an entire semester’s course called “Directed Readings in Culture, Health and Medicine” tackling an entire topic of your choosing (I call it a “mini thesis”).
2. Wrote a lot. Most courses required you to write a “critical reflection” (or some equivalent of it) about the readings, reviewing and reflecting upon what you read, relating it to your experiences or other readings. In addition to those weekly pieces, most – if not all – courses also required a final research paper or essay that counted for the majority of your grade for the semester: anywhere from 40 percent to 75 percent.
3. Discussed a lot. For introductory-level courses with many students attending the lectures (these are usually combined classes for undergraduates and postgraduates), the teachers also ran weekly “tutorials” in which you have in-depth discussions with a smaller group of fellow students about the topic of the week. For other courses with fewer students (often “applied-level” courses catering to postgraduates only) the discussions were very rich because of the diverse educational and professional backgrounds of the participants. I appreciated these interdisciplinary discussions very much because they broadened my knowledge and views of whatever topic we were tackling for the week. Courses with student-led teaching also had us making many slide presentations over the two years – which of course I did not mind (I like making slides… I know, it’s weird). Teaching a concept to other people is definitely was a way to master the subject you are trying to understand.
4. Zoomed a lot. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I estimate about 30-40% of my education over two years was in-person and the rest was online. We had a few weeks of in-person classes in the first semester of 2020, while the 2021 academic year was a mixed bag of in-person and online. Zoom videoconferencing software was a staple of our lives during the pandemic and my education was no exception. Some of the courses already had an online component (i.e., they were conducted both in-person and online in a hybrid manner) but others had to make the shift to all-online format which worked for some – but not all – of the classes.

What I learned – the key takeaways:

1. Medicine and health do not exist in a vacuum. Society, culture, politics, history, and economics influence medicine and health, and vice versa, in soooo many ways. The readings, writings and discussions honed skills in critical analysis necessary for seeing the connections between society and medicine. To make these connections, medical anthropology entails reading broadly across multiple fields, which suits my bookworm-y, trivia-loving brain just fine. Here is some proof that the degree “worked”, and I learned something in the last two years: there are comments I can now make on Facebook and other social media that I wouldn’t even have thought of before going to school.
2. While the scientific method and scientific knowledge are portrayed as (and believed to be) objective and measurable, they are also influenced by the prevailing issues of the day. For example, grant-giving bodies will fund studies that address current medical problems affecting society (say, HIV/AIDS). Even if you have a great idea for a study but it’s not relevant to a lot of people (e.g., a rare disease) it may not get as much attention as other medical issues. But if someone powerful like a politician or popular figure has the rare disease, this can raise awareness and maybe a grant-giving body would be more likely to fund looking for a cure. The data produced by studies is objective; the topic being studied can be influenced by many things.
3. Many types of knowledges can coexist. While Western scientific and biomedical knowledge are very dominant, they are not the only ones that are true; other cultures and their bodies of knowledge (their way of looking at things) are equally valid. However, given the dominance of Western knowledge, the rest of the other knowledges are viewed as subordinate or unimportant. Current anthropological thinking wishes to change this Western-centric view of the world and raise awareness of the existence of multiple ways of understanding the world. We have a long way to go until this is achieved, because of this Western hegemony (a jargon-y new word I learned, meaning dominance).
4. Such concepts as colonialism, gender issues (the patriarchy, feminism, queer theory, etc.) and humanism are embroiled in this Western biomedical view as well. These are large, vaguely jargon-y terms that I wouldn’t have thrown around before. I still do not have the confidence to discuss or explain them in depth, and I feel like I’ve only touched the surface of these concepts during the last two years. The anthropology majors in our postgraduate classes certainly grasp them better than I do – I’ve admired how their thinking differs from people like me whose undergraduate education is almost entirely science-based.
5. This degree is essentially an extension of, and deep dive into, what we do in Rehabilitation Medicine. With our holistic view of the patient (not just a diagnosis or organ/organ system), the sociocultural issues affecting the patient and patient care always come into play. A lot of what we do in rehabilitation also deals with communication – both within the rehabilitation team and with the patient, so I truly appreciated the courses dealing with linguistics and the humanities included in the curriculum.
6. Qualitative research suits my personality and interests better, compared to quantitative research (having done that reluctantly for two years in Pittsburgh, after the clinical Spinal Cord Injury Medicine fellowship). I now have a good foundation in both methods (hooray for mixed methods studies). However, I still would not want to do research full-time. I appreciate that I now have a good understanding of both worlds and can navigate them, but I do not love research enough to make it my only job. Hats off to people who love this – you are a special breed.

Note: For people who do like research, the ANU does offer the MCHealth&M degree with an Advanced option – this takes away the four electives and replaces them with a thesis, ideal for people who want to explore a particular subject in depth. I did not choose this because I would rather get bits and pieces of other subjects instead of focusing on one big topic over a minimum of two semesters.

And the non-academic stuff:

1. Living in Australia was fun. A word association with “Canberra” does not usually bring up “fun”, but rather words like “politics” and “boring”. Canberra can provide you with good quality of life, despite being cold in the winter (a well-insulated home and driving a car would help… I had neither). If you wanted big-city life, you could always take a trip to Sydney for the week or weekend then return to quiet Canberra. Overall, Australia has a more laid back culture compared to the USA yet services are generally more efficient than USA and (even more so) the Philippines. I made many good friends, ate a lot of good food, drank a lot of good coffee (flat whites are the best), and enjoyed being independent. Yes, I will miss it.
2. There are still parts of Australia that I would like to see, and New Zealand too. I was going to do those during winter and summer breaks. As with everything, COVID-19 threw a monkey wrench (in Australia: “threw a spanner”) into the holiday plans, what with interstate borders threatening to shut down suddenly and pre-travel testing meant you had to thoughtfully consider your schedules. I would love to return and be a tourist again someday.
3. Having been out of the clinics for just about two years, I realized I miss patient care. I toyed with the idea of being a full-time academic, but I didn’t see myself doing what most of my teachers did full time: teaching, research and writing. At one point I also flirted with the idea of doing a PhD which fit right into the unique medicine-anthropology-performing arts medicine skillset. But overall that path would not be as fulfilling as helping people, so I would like to get back to seeing patients. I miss Medicine but I now realize that I have to practice Medicine on my own terms. This is what remains to be seen – finding the right balance between the patient care and the teaching-research-writing-consulting in order to (1) be happy, contented and fulfilled, and (2) get paid for it and make a living. We’ll see where this degree takes me: hopefully onto something and somewhere exciting!

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