A public health career can provide rewarding opportunities to make an impact, as well as financially stable jobs. Luckily, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, careers in health education and community health are projected to grow faster than average over the next decade. This, in addition to national healthcare changes, challenging job opportunities, and a lack of regional restrictions, makes a public health career a promising option for many.
Job Growth
Growth in the public health field means more than just income and job stability: it also translates into variety and diversity in career options. As public health awareness has risen over the past decade, corporations, governments, and schools are all investing in public health personnel. Consider a private corporation like Google, which has invested heavily in ensuring its employees are healthy. This includes a corporate fitness center, wellness classes, and healthy food. Facilitating these types of policies requires public health workers, which means more jobs for people in the field.
National Healthcare Changes
Topics like Obamacare dominate the daily news cycles. For people in a public health career, this can mean job opportunities. One of the major focuses of the Affordable Care Act was preventative healthcare, and public health workers by definition work in preventative health. To keep healthcare usage down, public health officials need to educate people on healthy eating, exercise, nutrition and general mental wellness. Public health is thus critical to ensuring that legislation like Obamacare works, and that healthcare prices fall, and so employment opportunities are likely to grow nationwide.
Public Health Challenges
People looking for a challenging career will not be disappointed by a public health career. More than one-third of American adults are obese, and even nearly one-fifth of American children and adolescents are obese. Other health crises, like drug addiction and alcoholism, plague many American cities and towns. While this outlook might be bleak, it provides public health practitioners an opportunity to effect change. While the trends are not promising — with obesity and addiction constantly in the news — the opportunity to reverse these trends exists with hard work and perseverance.
The World As Your Stage
One of the major benefits of a career in public health is that practitioners can work anywhere. Many careers are centered in certain cities or regions — tech in Silicon Valley, government in Washington, D.C. — but public health careers exist everywhere. The need for public health education exists in cities healthy and unhealthy, though the nature of the work in these different communities will vary considerably. Individuals who want the freedom to hold a job they love, wherever they want, will be very pleased with a public health career.
Considering a career in public health requires weighing important variables like income stability, job opportunities, and the chance for professional growth. Luckily, public health weighs positively on all of these metrics. People interested in a stable, growing and challenging career will be very pleased with a public health career.