What Can I Do with a Master of Public Health Degree?

Job Description: Healthcare administrators oversee how healthcare is delivered on a large scale. They are leaders who are responsible for ensuring that daily operations are safe and comply with policies, laws, and regulations. They change policies as needed and create new ones to improve care. They meet with department heads and clinical leadership to stay updated and informed and give directives to other staff to meet goals and accomplish needed tasks. They resolve large-scale issues and handle complex situations.

Useful Traits or Skills: You’ll need to be highly organized and a great communicator with stellar time management. This is a leadership role, so you’ll also need to be able to resolve conflicts and keep calm in a crisis.

Typical Workplaces: You can find roles in hospitals, medical practices, rehabilitation facilities, skilled nursing facilities, and human service agencies.

Available Certifications: You can find roles in hospitals, medical practices, rehabilitation facilities, skilled nursing facilities, and human service agencies.

Opportunities for Advancement: There’s plenty of room for advancement as a healthcare administrator. You could make the move from a role as a healthcare administrator at a small community hospital to taking on an administrative role with a large healthcare network. Another path? You could take your skills and affect political change as a public health consultant.

Salary: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), healthcare administrators earn a median salary of $110,680.

Job Outlook: Roles are sharply on the rise with 28.4% growth projected through 2032.

Job Description: A social services manager is responsible for the care and services delivered by social and human services agencies. These managers monitor how their agency interacts with the community they serve and create policies that are informed by those interactions. They design outreach programs to address specific community members or needs, implement and oversee those programs, and use the results to help create additional programs. They pay attention to what resources are needed in their community and work to create ways for people to access them. Social services managers train their staff on needs specific to the community they serve.

Useful Traits or Skills: You’ll need to be compassionate with excellent critical thinking skills, be able to organize, and possess a high level of creativity. This leadership role will also require strong communication skills and ample patience.

Typical Workplaces: You can find work at human service agencies, social service agencies, nonprofits, government agencies, senior communities, and hospitals.

Available Certifications: The Certified in Public Health credential is available to those seeing a role as a social services manager.

Opportunities for Advancement: A social services management career can take you in several directions. You could delve further into social work and human services by striving to earn social work licensure in your state. If you’d rather take on an advocacy role, you could look into a role such as health policy advisor.

Salary: According to the BLS, social services managers earn a median salary of $77,030.

Job Outlook: There’s a growing need for social service managers, and roles are projected to grow 9.1% over the next decade.

Job Description: An epidemiologist is a data expert who monitors diseases and infection. They track diseases to determine how likely they are to spread through a community. They look at infection patterns to determine how severe infections are likely to be and which populations are most likely to be vulnerable. The data that epidemiologists compile and the conclusions they draw are then used to drive healthcare policies and regulations. For example, the work of epidemiologists is used to advise on standards and policies during pandemics.

Useful Traits or Skills: You’ll need to be an expert at data analysis and research to work as an epidemiologist. Critical thinking and written communication skills can help you put your research and analysis to good use.

Typical Workplaces: You can find work in academic facilities, research labs, hospitals, and government agencies.

Available Certifications: You can consider the CHP or the Certified in Infection Control certification from the Certification Board of Infection Control and Epidemiology.

Opportunities for Advancement: An epidemiologist’s role is a great foundation for additional careers that help manage disease. You could look into working as a biostatistician or taking on a role as a disease control manager.

Salary: The BLS reports that epidemiologists earn a median annual salary of $81,390.

Job Outlook: Roles are projected to see a massive growth of 26.7% over the next decade.