callumpierce

Hello! I recently graduated in Medicine in July of this year. Rather than enter the Foundation Programme I moved to the Netherlands to pursue an MSc Global Health at the University of Maastricht. Unfortunately my funding was severely delayed which meant I had to return to the UK and make other plans for the coming year. I plan to return to Swaziland, where I conducted a small Health Services research project earlier this year, for an 11 month period to work with a large research NGO in the country under a "Public Health Assistantship". I have no family backing for financial support so I will be relying on scholarships, studentships or grants in order to fund my postgraduate study. i am trying to figure out what programmes to apply for in Autumn 2015 after I come back from Swaziland. I want to pursue a career in Public Health particularly in an international or low-resource context. The kind of fields I am interested in are Health Services, Health Management or Health Policy. Athough I was delighted to get into Maastricht University and I felt that Global Health was a good match for my career ambitions, from the short time I spent on the course I don't feel it had enough focus on research skills or qualitative and quantitative data handling for my career goals. Now I'm a bit bewildered by the choices that are available and I don't really know where to start. The two things I was hoping to ask the forum for are; 1) What, in your cumulative opinion, are the relative merits of the MPH programme compared to things like an MRes, MPhil or MSc in any of the above subjects? I think a PhD is definitely in my long-term career goals, especially as I want to go into research. I am thinking of applying for a 3+1 MPhil/MRes+PhD programme but even though some look amazing I am struggling to find any which align with my career goals which are also fully funded. Overall I just have no idea whether to go for a Masters and then apply for a PhD or to go straight for a 3+1 kind of programme. 2) Does anyone have any experience of seeking funding for their postgraduate careers? I want to enrol in a Masters programme or MPhil/PhD that lets me conduct my thesis research abroad but I'm struggling to find any studentships for this kind of study. I know that schemes like ESRC, NIH exist but I don't know where to start in trying to find supervisors for this kind of application. 3) I'm struggling to know where to start in terms of contacting potential supervisors for PhD or MRes programmes. Is there anyone out there who's done this before who might be able to give me some pointers on what kinds of people I should be approaching? Is it acceptable to just write to professors and research organisation directors in my field to get the ball rolling, or should I contact the PhD students working under them in the first instance, or even the admissions dean? I'm sorry for the novel here but as you can probably tell I'm like a rabbit in the headlights, I just want to get things in motion so I'm all set up for next year. Thanks in advance for your help! Cal.