Caelan Browne is a New Colombo Plan Mobility Grant recipient from The University of Western Australia. Caelan undertook the Public Health Study Tour (PHST) in July 2025.
Q:Why did you decide to undertake the Acicis Public Health Study Tour?
The biggest reason for me was because I have been learning Bahasa Indonesia for a few years now but have never had the opportunity to use it in-country. Through this program I had the opportunity to take language classes and talk with locals which has accelerated my language learning faster than what I could in Australia.The PHST was the perfect way for me to not only get to do this but to also learn about Indonesia in a way that is relevant to my degree. Getting to learn about how another country runs their healthcare program was something I was very interested in. Also, I have a lot of interest in communicable diseases and the focus on this throughout the tour perfectly complemented this.
Q: Did you receive a New Colombo Plan Mobility Grant? If so, how did this contribute to your experience in Indonesia?
I received a $3000 Grant through the New Colombo Plan which is pretty much the reason why I could afford this trip. It covered the majority of the fees for this tour, which includes accomodation, meals, domestic flights, etc. making the study tour cheaper than what it would have been to go on a regular holiday to Java.
Q: What did you find to be the most challenging about your experience on the PHST?
I think getting used to a new country was the most challenging part. It’s always really cool to get to see a new and unfamiliar place but that also means you don’t necessarily have the comforts of home. This was my first time travelling without family so it felt a little different. The friends I made on this trip helped with this a lot though and I found that I adapted to this pretty quickly. It also helps that we had the tour leaders and our new friends from the University of Indonesia to help guide us around, which made things a lot easier on us.
Q: What public health issues in Indonesia have you become more interested in/aware of as a result of this tour?
I’ve always been interested in communicable diseases. So since we learnt about neglected diseases and endemic bacterial/viral diseases in Indonesia, I’ve been really interested in that. I’ve always been interested in these from the more biological angle though, looking at how they affect the body. But what interests me most about what we learnt during this tour were the specific factors that are unique to Indonesia that make some of these diseases so problematic to the health system. So this tour definitely helped me appreciate the sides of public health that I didn’t really beforehand.
Q: What was your favourite field trip? Explain why.
I really enjoyed the field trip where we got to go to the hospital on the UI campus. The hospital system is very different in Indonesia compared with Australia, and in ways I didn’t expect. Getting to see that firsthand was a really important experience for me. Also, they didn’t just take us around the public areas of the hospital. We also got to see the labs they work in and what equipment they use to diagnose.
Q: How do you think the Public Health Study Tour will influence your future career or studies?
I think in a lot of ways this tour reinforced the direction I want to go in. I got to experience how the public health system functions in another country and see not only what worked really well with it, but also how it could be improved. We especially saw the gaps in how certain groups are more vulnerable to public health issues and these parallels can definitely be drawn to the issues of the health system in Australia. This tour gave us the opportunity to consider how another country functions and forced us to consider what we could learn from it.
Q:What did you most enjoy about the seminar series?
I think the beta part of the seminars was how relevant they were. They touched on the most important topics in Indonesian public health and in such a short amount of time gave us a lot of really valuable information about these issues. Also, the way they connected with the field trips and complemented one another was really helpful because the seminars helped me understand from a theoretical point of view but the field trips helped me understand the reasons why the health system may function in that specific way.
Q: What was your favourite aspect about visiting Indonesia?
Getting to see all the places that I’ve been getting told about since year 11 Indonesian class was definitely a highlight. You get plenty of free time on this tour to go see around Jakarta and Jogja. My top 3 would probably be seeing the Kota Tua in Jakarta, Borobudur, as well as going on a Jeep drive around Merapi. Any description I heard of them did not even come close to how amazing these places were to see in person.
