Hello! I am almost finished with an MPH program and will be applying to med school in the next year or two. I know that I want to go to med school and become a physician, but I'm concerned about how much I'll get to utilize my public health education as a physician. I'm interested in hearing from anyone a little further along on the MD/MPH career path about any things I should do, tips, advice, career moves etc that I should consider in order to be able to maintain a public health component in my career. If it matters, I think I'll probably end up going into family med or primary care of some form. Thanks for any advice!
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What did your MPH focus on ?
Behavioral and Community Health
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I am unsure what part of the mph you want to retain as a career component. You probably won't want to do program evaluations but you could be part of teams that design and implement community level interventions if you work for a large enough healthcare system. Kaiser permenante does some work like that. The the epidemiology background will play in nicely with evidence review teams and guideline setting teams. It really boils down to which components you want to keep. Working for the CDC or some other government entity would also enable you to use that.
Imho the value of the mph is not in the competencies rather the way of thinking on a system level that it imparts to you.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Program evaluation is the bane of my existence so I'll be happy to never do that again haha. I'm more interested in program design and implementation, so I just want to make sure that I put myself in a position where I can still be involved in that in some way if I choose. I agree with your statement that an MPH is less about competencies and more about looking at the whole system. I just want to know how to get myself into a position where I have the opportunity to work as a physician (not just volunteer) in community-based health programs.
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1) I wouldn't worry about all this just yet.
2) focus on getting into med school.
3) focus on completing med school.
4) focus on completing residency.
5 ) focus on getting work.
6 ) then focus on the ability to work in public health.
The healthcare landscape will be different in 10 years and public health roles might be hot. Or not. But your interests could be drastically different. Maybe you want to do neurosurgery after a few years in med school.
There are plenty of roles where this is available to physicians. Local government ,CDC, private insurers, Medicare, hospital administration, clinic administration all of those roles have pieces of public health embedded in them in terms of program design, community outreach,program implementation and such.
You speak the truth, thanks for the feedback
