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Low pay and burnout make jobs in public health a bitter pill to swallow. Aside from a greater funding for local departments, changing hiring practices and focusing on mental health and career satisfaction could help.
thebulletin.org
Seems spot on, especially as someone looking at jobs right now.
People don’t realize how heavily most state health departments rely on funding from CDC grants. All of the work my current team does is funded through CDC grants, not the state. Only two of the 9 ppl on my team are state employees, the rest are contractors. That’s how is throughout the entire state health dept. Grant funded positions can often be temporary and some of those don’t even have benefits.
CDC took a pretty huge funding hit with the recent debt deal that was made. That’s having huge downstream effects.
I’m seeing a lot of jobs requiring masters degrees and extensive data analytics and visualization skills/experience and paying 45-55k in high COL areas. Even if you love it, it’s hard when you could take those skills elsewhere for better compensation. A relative of mine did public service for awhile and is now a lead data scientist elsewhere making bank. Money isn’t everything and ppl who go into public health do it because they care, but being financially secure and able to care for your family are important.
Public health has always flown under the radar and done a poor job of showing just how valuable it is to the public. (before covid). I think if ppl knew what all public health did for them, it would’ve been easier to get more funding allocated. After covid though, public health has been maligned. That means it’ll be harder to respond effectively in the future, setting us up for failure again. Don’t know how we recover.
But its such meaningful work, too. 🙁
