Public Health Careers
By Staff

The purpose of Public Health is to educate, research, and endeavor to make communities healthy. Public Health careers also can educate and promote a lifestyle that is healthy and can keep people in good health.

People with careers in Public Health are generally trying to prevent disease or injuries. A person who has a healthy lifestyle and is educated on certain dangers will not get certain diseases and may avoid getting injured because of the knowledge they’ve gained.

Public Health covers a rather broad area, so there are many different types of jobs and careers one can pursue in the field.

Public Health Nursing

This field of Public Health involves educating people about injury and disease awareness and avoidance. A Public Health Nurse teaches the public safety and ways to prevent disease or injury while at home or in the workplace.

Public Health Nurses can work in a variety of places. They do a lot of work in poor communities. They lend their services to the poor by treating them and giving much-needed immunizations to those who aren’t immunized. A Public Health Nurse can also work with certain governmental establishments to find ways to decrease any threatening epidemics.

Other places they could work are at schools to help educate and stop teen pregnancy or other problems students are having. Businesses are yet another possible area to work in.

Epidemiologist

The field of Public Health is concerned with controlling and preventing outbreaks of diseases. Epidemiologists do a lot of investigative work to find the cause of disease, and they also try to determine who is most likely to be affected by the disease. Finally, an Epidemiologist tries to research how to prevent any further outbreaks.

There are a variety of places Epidemiologists can work for including pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, health departments, and research facilities.

Public Health Inspector

A Public Health Inspector is crucial to protecting the public from potential health risks. They go to establishments of many kinds, like restaurants, and file a report that notes whether the establishment was compliant with sanitary codes and health laws. They inspect many other places like hotels and even swimming pools. Their work helps to keep the public safe from unhealthy practices by restaurants, and they address complaints about an establishment to see if there is a problem.

Public Health Inspectors work for a few different places but generally find jobs working for the state or a county.

Public Health Specialist

Public Health Specialists deal with environmental contamination. They assess what kind of problems it could cause the public. They also strive to find out the dangers hazardous materials pose to people. Public Health Specialists investigate situations dealing with hazardous materials and the public as well.

They usually are hired by the Department of Health.

Public Health is an important and broad field that prides itself upon the protection of the public from dangerous outbreaks of disease and promotion of individual and communal well-being.