Wondering what a career in Public Health would look like? Do you need to have a medical degree in order to be effective as a public health professional? What are people in the field involved in and what do they think about?
The Association of Schools of Public Health maintains a Careers in Public Health site. The CDC has a very good PDF on profiles of its public health workers, and info on training programs that effectively answer the question, “What are the different fields in public health?” The BU School of Public Health has a Career office that is more than willing to accomodate undergrads. Stay tuned later in the year for an event with both the Director of Career Services at BUSPH and the Director of Admissions!
For more “contextualizing” sources:
- Massachusetts General Hospital runs a fellowship which sponsors “health care professionals to serve refugee populations and victims of complex humanitarian disasters.” Fellows have been to a charity “floating” hospital in post-tsunami Southeast Asia, a refugee camp in Rwanda, and a maternal health ward in Zambia, among other places. Not only are the blogs eye-opening, they are also very well-written.
- New York Times’ op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof holds a blog with frequent guests from the international public health world. Among them are Josh Ruxin, associate professor from Columbia working in the field; Nicki Bennett, an American aid worker; Sue Makin, an American missionary doctor working in southern Malawi. In addition, Nick ran a contest whose winner(s) got to accompany Nick through his reporting trips in Africa. The contest ran in the summers of 2006 and 2007, and the accompanying videos focus on many issues facing public health workers in developing countries.
