Academic job vs. Health Department job

[holabuster]

My career goal is to become a leader in public health and help impact population health. In my limited experience (~3 years doing health metrics research), I have become progressively more disillusioned that getting an academic job and doing research is the way to do that. I've been a part of many published papers but not seen their impact on public health decisions.

A career path I'm looking into is getting a job at a city, state, or even federal health department. I'm hoping it will mean I can have a more direct impact on public health decisions and policies.

I was wondering if any of you had experience with these career paths? What were the pros and cons? How can you make an impact on real-world decisions as an academician? Have any of you experienced this?

Thank you for any insights on this.

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[Stories]

As individuals, our impacts are usually concentrated in small areas. We build from our small niche areas and grow into more decision making positions as our careers progress. Since we're still in the beginning of our careers, the scope of our work will be limited until we grow. Give it time.

 

[ec_lc1114]

My career goal is to become a leader in public health and help impact population health. In my limited experience (~3 years doing health metrics research), I have become progressively more disillusioned that getting an academic job and doing research is the way to do that. I've been a part of many published papers but not seen their impact on public health decisions.

A career path I'm looking into is getting a job at a city, state, or even federal health department. I'm hoping it will mean I can have a more direct impact on public health decisions and policies.

I was wondering if any of you had experience with these career paths? What were the pros and cons? How can you make an impact on real-world decisions as an academician? Have any of you experienced this?

Thank you for any insights on this.

I work at a policy research institute and am kind of in the same boat. I find myself wishing I were on the ground working for the programs that we are evaluating rather than sitting at my desk evaluating them. I can't comment much on the pros and cons of either other than agreeing that working in an academic position can feel removed from the impacts, but I can say that it looks like some state departments of health are engaging in really interesting programs that clearly have a positive effect on their populations. Now I'm interested to know whether you can make a greater direct impact working for an organization like the CDC or maybe an NGO or whether health departments are the way to go.

 

[Mks93]

Sorry, I can't speak from experience, but I have a suggestion for you. You should talk to some researchers at a large health department (if you can). I recently had a job interview at a health department and asked them about the differences between academic research and applied research. They had great answers and a lot of insight. It definitely made me rethink my (current) plan to get a PhD and teach/do research.