How do physicians get involved with public health?

[premedbaddie]

I would love to be a practicing physician at a clinic ( dermatology, allergy, psychiatry, or what so have you) while being involved in public health ( a lot of my ecs and interests are public health centered) But I want to have an idea on how does a practicing physician fit in the field of health for specialities outside of primary care and IM. I know MD/MPH programs exists, but what do physicians actually do with both degrees and how do they get involved in both clinical practice and public health work. Do you have to choose one or the other?

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[LizzyM]

It is not necessary to choose one or the other. Some work part of the time in a clinical setting as well as serving on policy making boards (e.g. board of health), promote health education to the public in their area of expertise, and/or conduct research, publish and speak on issues involving some small segment of population health (epidemiology, practice guidelines, etc), engage in advocacy at the local, state and/or national level through patient advocacy and/or specialty practice groups to increase funding for research and clinical services and establish better service delivery, policies, etc.

The money is in patient care and the other is usually a side job that is done as part of a career in academic medicine or through part-time employment in a government office.

There are also those folks who go full-time into one or the other by choice. I've also known people who had a full-time job in a government agency and who worked a few weekends a month in a hospital setting just to stay sharp clinically.

 

[cj_cregg]

MPH, MPA, and MPP can all be useful degrees in this realm.

Some docs I know with these types of degrees are medical directors for FQHCs doing some cool innovative stuff within their clinics related to specific patient populations, serving on local/county boards of health, have admin roles within their nonprofit hospital system or teaching roles that relate to public health and community outreach programming. We also have lots of folks in the hospital system who dabble in this type of work without these degrees, usually things like serving on hospital committees that aim to improve patient outcomes for patients with specific diseases (COPD, CHF, etc.). Certainly any physician can get engaged with advocacy at the local, state, and federal level about topics they care about, and many medical groups like the AMA and specialty organizations like AAFP, AAP, AAEM, etc. have advocacy arms where they are always happy to help docs meet with representatives.

I think primary care especially (FM, IM, peds) as well as other adjacent specialties like psych, EM, and OBGYN are the best jumping point for these types of roles (but I'm a little biased as an FM doc about to finish one of these degrees). But, there are certainly specialists who get involved with these things as well. I know a cardiologist who has been advocating hard within our health system to get better continuity of care for heart failure patients and started up a program for care coordination and wraparound services within the cardiology clinic, for example.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

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