Undergraduate Public Health Student Profile: Gwyneth Chua
From analysing real-world health data to designing practical health communication campaigns, the Public Health and Epidemiology major equips students with skills that open pathways into medicine, dentistry, research, public health, epidemiology and beyond — while making a meaningful impact on population health.
During the final year of her Bachelor of Biomedicine, Gwyneth Chua completed three subjects that form the Public Health and Epidemiology major. Reflecting on her undergraduate journey, Gwyneth says, “When I enrolled in my Bachelor of Biomedicine, I really didn’t know where it would take me. I knew I wanted to work in clinical health, but I wasn’t sure what type.”
The Public Health and Epidemiology subjects gave Gwyneth the chance to broaden her interests and explore new concepts and ideas. “From Intro to Epidemiology and Real World Epidemiology, where I learned to analyse different study designs and patterns of disease distribution, to Ethics and Equity in Health, where I explored how social and commercial factors shape health opportunities and outcomes, I developed a much deeper understanding of the importance of public health — and the role I could play in creating meaningful change.”
The major culminates in the capstone subject Communicating for Health, Not Harm, which brings together learning from across the biomedicine degree. The subject equips graduates to become evidence‑informed, empathetic and credible communicators, capable of creating health impact at both individual and population levels, engaging priority populations, and influencing behaviour and policy change.
Assessment tasks are highly practical. In an innovative first for the University, one assessment option in collaboration with the University's Health Promotion Program invites students to design a health promotion campaign aligned with the University’s wellbeing priorities, with the potential for real‑world use.
In 2024, this aligned closely with a VicHealth initiative inviting university students to enter a competition addressing vaping harms among young people — supporting the University of Melbourne’s ongoing Towards a smoke‑ and vape‑free campus activities. Recognising the growing prevalence of e‑cigarette use among young people, Gwyneth chose vaping as the focus of her capstone assessment and entered the competition.
Drawing on data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, as well as behaviour change frameworks such as the Health Belief Model and values‑based approaches, Gwyneth designed a campaign aimed at reaching students in digital spaces where vaping is often normalised or glamorised.
She chose Snapchat as her platform and developed a custom, in‑app filter to highlight the harms of vaping — a novel approach that complemented existing resources from VicHealth, the University’s Health Promotion Program and Quit.
To bring the idea to life, Gwyneth pushed herself well beyond her comfort zone, teaching herself how to design and code a Snapchat filter. Drawing on skills gained through internships and technology‑focused opportunities during her degree, she spent hours developing and testing the tool. Her entry placed third in the competition.
With Gwyneth heading toward a career improving people’s oral health, the main thing she wants people who play with her filter to remember is: “vaping damages oral health – being smoke and vape free will help keep breath fresh and your teeth white for longer.”
Now one year into her Doctor of Dental Surgery at the University of Melbourne, Gwyneth reflects on the lasting impact of the major: “Public health and epidemiology taught me to think about health on a much broader scale — beyond the molecular level. Learning about social and commercial determinants opened my eyes to how inequities contribute to illness and sparked a passion to address these disparities by communicating science with integrity and empathy.”
If you have a snapchat profile, you can try the filter yourself