How to Get a PhD in Public Health

An aging population. A national health care system in a state of change. Growth in chronic problems ranging from obesity to Alzheimer's disease. An environment whose changes pose new threats to health.

For these and other reasons, public health will likely face persistent issues for the foreseeable future. If you want a career dedicated to meeting these challenges, consider earning a PhD in public health.

This guide takes you through the process of choosing a PhD in public health, including:

• Deciding on whether a doctorate in public health fits with your career goals. You can enter the field with a bachelor's degree, so why go on to earn a PhD? This guide explores some of the issues favoring a doctorate degree.

• Considering an area of focus within public health. Naturally, public health is an extremely broad field, so as you prepare to pursue a PhD in public health, have a sense of what type of career your education should anticipate.

• Choosing a graduate public health program. There are many different issues to weigh when choosing the school in which to pursue your doctorate in public health, and in recent years, online PhD programs have increased the options available to you.

• Applying to a PhD in public health program. Doctorate programs are competitive, but with some advanced preparation, you can improve your chances of success.

This guide can help you make carefully thought-out choices so you can pursue your PhD in public health with confidence. After all, this decision is not just important to your career, but it could contribute toward meeting the public health challenges of the future.

Career Goals and a Public Health PhD

The first step in this process is deciding whether a doctorate in public health can help you meet your career goals. When you consider long-term career objectives, there are several reasons why a PhD in public health could be an asset:

• Research credentials. Because public health is focused on large populations and emerging trends, there is a significant research component to the field. A PhD in Public Health can give you both the training and the credential necessary to take a leadership role in a research operation.

• Teaching requirements. With the growth in demand for public health workers comes a growing need for public health educators. According to one report, less than one-fifth of the nation's 450,000 public health workers receive all the training they need. As a public health educator, you could help fill this training gap, and a doctorate would give you the greatest amount of flexibility in choosing what type of educational role you wanted to play.

• Government requirements. Since many public health jobs involve working for local, state, or national government, a doctorate may help you meet the qualification specifications for these jobs.

• Peer group respect. Public health officials often find themselves interacting with medical doctors. Having a doctorate of your own can help make sure that your background is given its due measure of respect in those interactions.

• Public credibility. Another aspect of some public health roles is dealing directly with the public, often through mass media. Having a high-level educational credential can give you instant credibility in situations where you need to win people's confidence quickly.

Any terminal degree, like a PhD in public health, can help your competitiveness in the job market because it raises your educational credentials to an elite level. Beyond that though, for the above reasons the nature of the public health profession is such that a doctorate may be especially valuable.

Considering an Area of Focus Within Public Health

The Institute of Medicine defines public health as "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health and efficiency through organized community effort." That's tall order, and a multi-faceted mission. Because public health is such a wide-ranging field, one of the most important steps in taking your career to the next level is to decide exactly what sort of public health career you want. This can help you gear your education to the role you expect to play.

To give you a feel for some of the options, the following are considered major components of the field of public health:

• Environmental Health. This is the study of how the world around us--including both natural and man-made factors--affects health, and how to identify and manage risk factors in the environment.
• Biostatistics. This is the use of statistical methods to identify emerging trends in health care, as well as to project future conditions.
• Behavioral Science/Health Education. This aspect of public health involves using education to influence the public's behavior so they can make better choices about health. This can involve things like educating people about the dangers of smoking, helping them understand the importance of safe sex, etc.
• Epidemiology. Epidemiologists study how diseases spread, and contribute to the formulation of strategies to help keep outbreaks of illness in check.
• Health Services Administration/Management. This encompasses the organizational and financial aspects of running a health services operation.
• Maternal and Child Health. Work in this area aims to improve the availability of health care and health education to mothers and their children, so it involves things like designing programs to promote pre-natal care and childhood inoculations.
• Nutrition. The public health aspect of nutrition includes studying the effect of diet and lifestyle on a population's health, and how to influence people to make healthier choices about what they eat and drink.
• International/Global Health. As products and individuals move more freely than ever across borders, there is a need to coordinate public health policies and practices internationally to cope with global health challenges.
• Public Health Laboratory Practice. This aspect of public health involves the testing of biological and environmental samples to identify and address threats to the general health and welfare of a community.
• Public Health Policy. This entails the legislative and regulatory aspects of safeguarding public health.
• Public Health Practice. This involves implementing public health procedures to treat health issues at the community rather than the individual level.

Choosing an area of focus within public health will help influence your next decision: choosing a graduate public health program.

Choosing a Graduate Public Health Program

Once you've chosen a particular area of interest within public health, you can now start your search for educational programs which offer coursework relevant to that area of interest. Of course, there are other factors in choosing a PhD program. Here are some tips on how to make this decision:

• Use your resources wisely. Online guides and directories are a great way to identify possible PhD in Public Health programs, and then the web sites of individual schools will help you do more intensive research. The U.S. Department of Education is also a good information source, as are annual college rankings and reviews from publications like Kiplinger's and U.S. News & World Report.

• Cast a wide net at first. Your initial research should identify both on-campus and online PhDs in Public Health. Don't eliminate either on campus or online PhD programs until you have worked through a few more of the relevant issues. Public health is still an emerging area, and so PhD programs are not as common as they are in some fields. You might ultimately find that an online PhD in Public Health is the only way you can get the program you need in your area.

• Match programs with your needs. This should refer back to the area of public health that you want to make the focus of your career. You'll want to look for schools with coursework, faculty, and facilities geared toward that specialty.

• Examine faculty quality. This can be somewhat subjective, but looking at the schools faculty members attended, the degrees they earned, and books or articles they've published will give you some sense of faculty quality. Naturally, you should focus on the faculty members in the subjects most closely related to your area of study.

• Research the school's reputation. There are a variety of college guides and rankings which can give you a sense of how highly regarded a program is, and it can also help to talk to recruiters in your field.

• Establish your educational budget. The reality is that no school is a good fit unless you can afford it. In particular, you don't want to get into a position of having to abandon a program half way through for financial reasons--that would just be a waste of time and money.

• Choose between on-campus and online PhD programs. The reason for waiting until this point to choose between on-campus and online PhD programs is that some of the previous practical considerations might heavily influence this decision. Depending on your location and flexibility to travel, an online PhD in Public Health may be the most accessible option for you. It may also be more affordable than on-campus programs. If those are not deciding considerations, then both on-campus and online PhD programs have other attributes in their favor. You may decide that the personal interaction with teachers and fellow students that you can get from an on-campus program is an important part of the educational experience. On the other hand, you may find that pursuing an online PhD in Public Health fits more readily around your schedule.

• Consider other environmental factors. If you choose an on-campus program, you'll want to think about what type of campus suits you best--small vs. large, public vs. private, etc.

• Check accreditation status. It is very important to make sure that either the school as a whole, or the Public Health PhD program in particular, are properly accredited. The Department of Education is a good resource for information on what agencies meet the necessary accreditation standards.

• Evaluate your chances of admission. It can be good to aim for a school with high standards, but not if they are hopelessly above your credentials. At the very least, you'll want to make sure you apply to a fallback school.

Working through all of these steps should help you narrow down the field to a short list.

Applying to a PhD in Public Health Program

Once you've identified the school or schools you may be interested in attending, the next step is to make sure you do everything in the application process to maximize your chances of admission.

As you might expect, the admission process for a PhD program may be more complex than any admission process you've experienced previously. There can be several elements involved in an application to a PhD program, including:

• Prior school transcripts.
• Standardized test scores (e.g., from the GRE or similar exam).
• Personal statement or essay.
• Letters of recommendation.

Timing is the key element in this process. It can be time-consuming to get the necessary materials together, take the appropriate exam, etc. The first thing you should do when starting to apply to a school is find out what the applicable due dates are. You can then work backward and budget your time so you can get everything done, leaving yourself as much lead time as possible.

Conclusion: Making the Most of Your PhD in Public Health

Earning your PhD in public health is a huge step toward a successful career in the field, but there are some other things you can do to improve your prospects. Some of these you'll want to continue throughout your career, but you won't necessarily want to wait until you've gotten your degree to begin. After all, pursuing a doctorate proves you are serious about this career; some other things you should do if you are serious about the field include:

• Continually read about recent developments in the field.
• Try to get articles and papers about the subject published.
• Participate in research projects.
• Gain as much relevant experience as you can, via summer jobs, internships, etc.
• Join a professional association. For example, the American Public Health Association has a mentoring program which could be a source of valuable career guidance.

Public health issues pose growing challenges, but from a career standpoint, those challenges should create opportunities. If you approach the PhD process with thoroughness and commitment, you should be well on your way toward helping to meet the public health challenges of the 21st century.

Sources

• American Public Health Association
• Association of Schools of Public Health
• Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Institute of Medicine
• Medical College of Wisconsin