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Alumni in Focus - Damian Brewer

Damian Brewer (Public Health MSc 2020)

A head and shoulders photo of Damian Brewer, Public Health MSc alumnus

"My experience at BSMS was so positive, I had good support and was able to further develop my research skills...

I am now a public health practitioner on the UK Public Health Register; the accreditation is quite challenging and would have been very difficult to achieve without my Masters in Public Health."

Damian Brewer, National Training and Consultancy Manager at the British Deaf Association, studied for his MSc in Public Health at BSMS, graduating in 2020. Damian tells us about his career journey and what he loved about postgraduate study at BSMS.

I am a 48-year-old Deaf man. My first language is British Sign Language, and I do use English too.

My career path has not been the most conventional, but then I have always been slightly maverick, and like to do things my own way. Like many people, I didn’t necessarily know what I wanted to do when “I grew up” and, one could argue, I still have this mindset to a certain extent. I will see what opportunities come up when I retire, hopefully in 15 or so years’ time (if I retire!).

Before I enrolled at BSMS, my career experience had always focused on working with and supporting people who had not had the best start in life due to external factors and trying to address the barriers they faced. My first job supported Deaf and hard of hearing people into work and training, which then morphed into a national consultancy role for a large Deaf charity, moving into pan-disability equality work, then later into the equality and diversity field.

My workplace at the time, a local district council in Sussex, wanted someone to pick up the workplace health and wellbeing programme, so that became part of my job. I really enjoyed this part of the job, helping to set up a range of workplace initiatives.

As a result of this role, I wanted to learn more about public health so I enrolled onto the first year of the Public Health postgraduate programme at BSMS to gain the PGCert. I live in Brighton, so BSMS was a natural choice. I also did my first BSc degree at the University of Brighton, graduating with a BSc in Sports Science in 1998; ironically this Brighton course has now moved from the Eastbourne site over to Falmer – very close to the BSMS campus!

I completed the PGCert alongside my full-time job role and enjoyed the course so much that I then carried on my studies with BSMS to diploma level.

I focused on elements of public health that were close to my heart by looking at Deafness and public health, and also separately studying more around sexual health. Also, at this time, I changed job roles away from a local district council to a London Borough where I worked as the C-Card scheme coordinator, supporting a sexual health scheme with condom distribution and also assisting the local infrastructure to reduce unplanned teenage pregnancies. My public health diploma from BSMS gave me the confidence to go for this role.

Whilst doing the course, I was promoted at work to a public health principal, covering a wider public health portfolio of sexual health, health protection, mental health and substance misuse. I took a two year study break before deciding to go for the dissertation and complete my MSc with BSMS. I felt I had unfinished business, and having a full MSc would be a useful addition for my new role.

I finished my dissertation with a distinction. My research investigated the barriers Deaf sign languages have accessing sexual health services. I handed in my dissertation on the first day of the COVID lockdown in March 2020, by which time I was working full-time in the public health team tackling COVID in Croydon. It was a tough and challenging time... hopefully we will not be going through that again anytime soon.

The research I did for my dissertation stood me in good stead, and I presented it in poster form (online as it was during the pandemic), at the British Association of Sexual Health and HIV Conference where I won a commendation.

I was also working with the Terrence Higgins Trust, advising on their accessibiliy to ensure that Deaf people have better access to sexual health awareness and testing. I was then asked to be one of the faces for the national annual HIV campaign for the work I had done promoting this in the Deaf community and for being one of the founders of Deaf Rainbow, a Deaf LGBTQIA charity.

The dissertation was also useful as I presented the findings at the national HIV conference to raise the profile of how Deaf sign language users struggle to access many aspects of sexual health and also the wider public health system. Deaf people unfortunately expect services to be inaccessible by default. I am trying to help organisations change their mindset to ensure true inclusion.

My experience of the Public Health course at BSMS has been so positive.

I had good support and used a notetaker who sat alongside me in lectures to make notes so that I could concentrate on what was being said without missing out due to my Deafness.

The study blocks were intensive, but a good way to immerse oneself fully in the modules. I most enjoyed health protection, global public health, and epidemiology. I was able to further develop my research skills, looking at articles and being able to consider their content and see if it was worthy of noting.

I am now a UK public health practitioner on the UK Public Health Register; the accreditation is quite challenging and would have been very difficult to achieve without my Masters in Public Health. It helped me to meet the various competencies.

I would encourage those who are thinking of doing the MSc in Public Health to go for it! Sometimes the mountain can feel hard to climb, but I am so pleased with myself, and that I managed to work through the self-doubt at times.

After seven years working in a public health team, I wanted to have a new challenge and explore public health and Deafness further, so I did a few months of consultancy work to focus on this specifically.

I worked with some clients and then an opportunity came up to work with the British Deaf Association as their national training and consultancy manager.

The role involves raising the profile of sign language, and working with a range of external partners to tackle some of the wider determinants of health – namely around health inequalities, inaccessibility of services due to lack of sign language provision, adverse childhood experiences in terms of Deaf children often being language deprived, and so on.

The UK is on the cusp of a huge change in terms of improving access for Deaf sign language users, and I am hoping I can help to be part of this change and influence things for the better.

The learning experience of my MSc in Public Health and my seven years in the public health team will all be very useful. It's all very exciting, and I've only been at the British Deaf Association for a few weeks so far.

If anyone wants to reach out to me, please follow me on LinkedIn.

Find out more about our MSc in Public Health