ALUMNI PROFILES
Todd
Schettini
MPH (Graduated in May 2008)
Product consultant for an Oncology Division of a pharmaceutical company
Hello! My name is Todd Schettini and I current work as a product consultant for an Oncology Division of a pharmaceutical company. In my free time, I also volunteer as the Health & Safety Officer at my local ambulance corps and serve on a FEMA disaster medical team that has been
deployed in times of national disasters. In 2006, I received my Masters of Science in Health Sciences from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, with a concentration in Disease Management. This master’s degree experience helped solidify my resolve to earn an MPH degree. After searching though and comparing many MPH programs, I came to decide on the MPH in Public Health Practice from UMASS-Amherst. In May of 2008, I was conferred this MPH degree from UMASS-Amherst. I use the information I gained from my MPH in various capacities through my work day. My company sponsors many goodwill programs (i.e. global health fellowships) in both domestic and foreign populations throughout the world to help promote health, health literacy and health-based systems. With my MPH, I have now completed the criteria for fellowship and will be applying to program
I decided to go for my MP
H due to large problems that arose from my work experiences from the pharmaceutical sector, the ambulance, disaster response work, and from systematic health inefficiencies uncovered from my initial master’s degree. The MPH degree seemed to embody my realization that while helping individuals live healthy lives at the local level is an important task, if you can make changes further up stream in the public health cascade, you can reach and impact more people. Prevention will be playing a large part of future population and individual health. Thus best practices for disease management, patient/healthcare provider education and other important health benefits need to be optimized and far reaching. The MPH degree is an excellent opportunity to gain better understanding and perspective on how to operationalize change at this population level. It also allows streamlined prevention and health benefits to reach more people than would be capable on a disorganized individual level. I wanted to help on a greater level than simply treating an individual patient on my ambulance, I wanted to go further to improve health and maximize resource utility on a larger scale.
The Public Health Practice (PHP) degree courses were helpful to me as the MPH core provide me with the fundamental knowledge to establish my p
ublic health critical thinking abilities. While I was interested in public health, I was used to an individual and medical approach to health. Population-based thinking is different from individual-based decision making. The Core helped indoctrinate (without overwhelming me) me and broaden my horizontal thinking about public health programs and systems level thinking. Other required courses help further guided my development of the public health practice mindset for problem solving. I think that some of the elective courses were phenomenal and the material always tied into current events going on in the world and US. This made learning more focused and insightful as you were able to apply course concepts and models to current domestic or global problems. One other strength is that we had perspectives from MPH students all over the world in our classes. This turned out to be an extremely important feature because you are able to hear first hand how different countries (developed and developing) try to address similar problems with various strategies, resources and outcomes. There were many different opinions introduced during PHP courses and they were all respected, debated and evaluated providing a rich learning experience. It takes a provocative MPH degree program like this one to make you realize how much in life you really don’t know, even when you think you do.
The MPH has already lead to improvement in how I manage my 
health and safety duties, appropriate consideration of population needs on disaster deployment, and even public service at my current employer. You can get a degree anywhere, but the true testament to a school is if they can provide you with an education. The MPH degree I earned here enabled me to gain a well rounded social and academic education while expanding my critical thinking, communication and problem solving skills. The degree also helped me to become a team player, as Public Health is such a wide reaching discipline you will become the “jack of all trades” and have to work seamlessly with other departments, organizations, governments and populations to make any initiatives you undertake a success. Lessons learned from this MPH degree can be applied to almost any career. In fact, I recently took another UMASS-Amherst PHP course this past Spring due to the relevance it had for my job.
The flexibility to not apply right away and take up two courses as a pre-matriculate was extremely beneficial. I was able to decide if I liked the program style, delivery and content before I fully committed to applying and matriculating to the program. I lik
ed having that flexibility as it helped reaffirm that I was making the right decision and was not pressured to start a matriculation or application process. While the timing of assignments and collaborative assignments were structured, the course selections allowed for a realistic balance of work-life-school demands. I highly recommend using the program coordinator MaryBeth Lizek for information about the program, course selection or just about anything else. She was able to balance left and right brain course work for me and helped make my program experience enjoyable. I am in the process of looking into Doctoral programs in either Public Health/Epidemiology or Pharmacy due to my experiences from this MPH program.
Pictured above is Margaret McCarthy, President RHO Chapter of the Delta Omega Honor Society with Todd was chosen as an inductee into the Delta Omega Honor Society due to his academic excellence and demonstration of qualities of leadership in public health.
