Benefits of mph degree

[ofcalifornia]

I have a bachelors degree in speech pathology and audiology. I worked in that field for 1 year and then i had to choose a completely different field for my work. Right now i do't work in the medical field, but i like working in the medical field and i want to come back to the medical field. Recently I heard about MPH and i was interested in doing it so that it will help me to come back to the medical field(Not particularly Audiology or Speech pathology). SO my question was if I do the MPH with a bachelors degree in Audiology and speech pathology what is the benefit and in what all fields I will be able to work? The reason for asking this question is, Whom ever I know doing the MPH, they all are Doctors or nurses who are already working in their field. But I am not even working in any medical field, so I was really worried about doing the MPH and not getting a job in the field. Please give some advice

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[themmases]

I used to work in medical research within a hospital before going to public health school, and a lot of people there had an MPH. For research coordinators, research program directors, and anyone in that career track, having an MPH was common. I'm not sure if there was a concentration that was the most common, although one very accomplished coordinator I worked with had an MPH in Epi. In that field, having at least some stats knowledge will definitely help you. But so would the training you'd get in running and evaluating health programs from a field like Community Health Science. Research coordinators generally have patient contact and depending on the type of research it can go hand in hand with clinical care, if that's what you're missing.

I also worked with biostatisticians in a methods core, who do not have patient contact but can be based within a health care system and work on just health research. I didn't meet any with an MPH specifically, but it's not uncommon for them to have an MS in biostatistics or applied statistics (the former of which you could get from a school of public health).

The final career within health care that I know of is hospital epidemiologist-- usually they are in charge of implementing and monitoring infection prevention and control programs. This area is growing in importance, especially since under ACA hospitals are under pressure to reduce lengths of stay, readmissions, and hospital acquired infections. However, hospital epidemiologists often need medical training as well. It's common for these job postings to be looking for nurse epidemiologists specifically. I believe there are programs where you could coordinate those two degrees if you're interested, but it's not my area so unfortunately I can't say for sure.

Hope this helps!