Public Health Job Description
If you completed your public health degree, then go ahead and pat yourself on the back.
The good news is that you won’t have any shortage of public health job opportunities to seek out.
You’ll have many public health career options and so the job search will be your main focus quickly after earning your degree.
Although there is a wide range of career paths you can take in public health this article will help explain the general public health job description and some options you can pursue on your search.
Let’s begin with the most general and basic public health job description:
A public health worker, in general, seeks to assist with monitoring and solving public health outbreaks, performing research on public health issues, educating the public on health issues, and assisting in developing plans and policies around public health.
This is only the general job description for public health workers, let’s get into some of the specific things you can do with a public health degree.
What Can You do With a Public Health Degree?
Earning your public health degree is a real challenge and a big milestone in your education and career.
Now that you are entering the workforce, how do you make an impact on the wellness of humans around the globe?
Health Care professionals working within the public health sector have a variety of responsibilities, dependent on their education level. From working in small towns to influencing global public health and wellness to teaching public health courses at universities, the opportunities are almost endless.
When you become a Public Health professional, your passion is to help those who are helpless or just need of a little hope, you can make a difference in lives. Your work could be in a developing country or helping with a natural disaster, or just researching new techniques in science. Your job comes with many different responsibilities and will require patience, selflessness, and a lot of compassion.
Specialties in Public Health – Where You’ll Make an Impact
One of the great things about getting a public health degree is that you can choose from a wide range of public health specialties to work in.
This means you can make a big impact in the area that you prefer or best fit into.
Here are some public health specialties you can consider working in:
- Biostatistics
- Child & Maternal Health
- Community Health
- Epidemiology
- Global Health
- Health and Human Services
- Infectious Disease
- Occupational Health
- Nutrition/Dietetics
- Health Policy and Management
- Health Promotion and Communication
- Social and Behavioral Health
- Water Quality
- Public Health Education
- Private Health Consultant
- Biomedical Scientist
What Does a Public Health Worker Do?
This profession over the last 100 years has forever changed the advancements in the health and longevity of the global population. Diseases have been eradicated, lifespans have increased, public policy has forever changed towards health. A public health servant has been the driving force behind this phenomenon.
As mentioned, Public Health careers is a very broad term when you think of the hundreds of different type of jobs within this profession. Public Administrators, health scientist, social workers, teaching professionals in health are just some of the many career you can pursue and each have their own unique job duties.
Some of those public health duties are:
- Prepares reports and analysis for Agency’s
- Advocate for patients and clients
- Prepares and manages government grants
- Researches funding opportunities and prepares budgets
- Coordinate patients’ discharge from health care facility
- Respond to environmental disasters or other crisis situations
- Enhance the philosophy of immunization
- Plan and conduct public health studies
- Present at conferences
What Are Some Public Health Career Paths?
The Public health field is very broad and the demand for all types of human wellness jobs exist worldwide. If you follow the health career path that your are passionate about, it should lead you to a job that you will enjoy and know will make a difference in peoples lives. It is a growing profession in part because of the aging population, and so there are many opportunities to advance within your career path as you become more experienced.
Many different roles within the Public Health exist:
- First responders
- Restaurant inspectors
- Health educators
- Scientists and researchers
- Nutritionists
- Community planners
- Social workers
- Epidemiologists
- Public health physicians
- Public health nurses
- Occupational health and safety professionals
- Public policymakers
- Sanitarians
If a career in public health sounds interesting to you then click on the blue button that says “Find Schools” to compare public health programs.
