MPH, Spain-Style
Alum leads public health efforts in Catalonian city of Lleida.
Oriol Yuguero i Torres had just earned a medical degree and begun four years of a primary care residency in Spain when a renowned Catalonian professor recommended he seek formal training in public health.
More specifically, Dr. Vincente Navarro convinced Yuguero that a Johns Hopkins MPH would benefit him and the population he now served. Yuguero recently had been appointed as public health councilor in the city of Lleida, and was responsible for the planning and development of everything from dental health plans to drug abuse prevention.
Yuguero heeded Navarro’s advice not only because he wanted to, but also because he could.
The Bloomberg School, Yuguero learned, has a lot to offer senior health professionals like him; especially through its Online/Part-time Master of Public Health degree program. The opportunity would enable him to practice medicine by day in Lleida while taking courses at the world’s No. 1 School of Public Health, based across the Atlantic, in Baltimore.
The bonus: He would begin the Bloomberg School program with a weeklong Fall Institute in nearby Barcelona. In one of his favorite cities in the world, he would meet—in person—the professors and classmates with whom he would work closely for the next three years.
“I felt I needed a more technical foundation in public health policy,” said Yuguero whose concerns ranged from his city's water quality to flu epidemics. "I needed a good education to know exactly how we can study these issues and what we will do, and to determine if the things we have done are working or not.”
While studying public policy, epidemiology and health systems with Bloomberg School faculty, he worked closely with his classmates. Among his corhort were attorneys, physicians, a dentist, a midwife, some research scientists and an MBA grad from London Business School.
“In my Hopkins class, there were people from Pakistan, Nigeria and South America,” he recalls. “Teamwork was very important.”
Yuguero, who earned his MPH in 2012, takes pride in his city’s progress, which he attributes to collaborations with a range of people, institutions and organizations.
“My broad vision of the public health is thanks to the Johns Hopkins MPH,” he said.
The 11th annual Health Policy and Management Fall Institute in Barcelona will be held November 10-14, 2014. The application deadline is August 1. Prospective part-time students may use the Centralized Application Service for Public Health (SOPHAS).