Pharmaceuticals after MPH

Started by greaper
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greaper

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I am very much interested to join the Pharma line after completing my MPH. Which concentration of MPH is best suited for the pharmaceutical line and jobs.
Which all colleges have campus placements for it. What all concentrations can land me a job in this sector.
Please help me guys, pros and cons welcome!
 
greaper said:
I am very much interested to join the Pharma line after completing my MPH. Which concentration of MPH is best suited for the pharmaceutical line and jobs.
Which all colleges have campus placements for it. What all concentrations can land me a job in this sector.
Please help me guys, pros and cons welcome!


29 views and no replies?
 
Well, I would guess epi or biostats would be the most obvious choices. I can't see many pharmaceutical companies looking for community health educators working on primary prevention. What is it that you want to do with pharmaceutical companies?
 
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greaper said:
29 views and no replies?

if you want to stay on the business-end of things, health management policy would be the natural choice.

if you're more interested in population assessments and bringing needed drugs to market, epidemiology would make sense. although, phrma is not known for being interested in developing the most urgently needed pharmaceuticals.
 
Thanks you all for your replies. I just love Public health and next in line is Pharmacology, so thought that way i would be doing justice to the love for both the subjects!
 
greaper said:
Thanks you all for your replies. I just love Public health and next in line is Pharmacology, so thought that way i would be doing justice to the love for both the subjects!
Pharmacoepi is a big field, but I'm not sure there are many people working for Big Pharma doing it.
 
Adcadet, could you please elaborate a little more on that field and which are the colleges that support it? Is this course recognized by ASPH or CEPH?
 
greaper said:
Adcadet, could you please elaborate a little more on that field and which are the colleges that support it? Is this course recognized by ASPH or CEPH?

The International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology has some good info. There are actually relatively few programs that specialize in pharmacoepi (Harvard, Temple, Maryland, Florida, UNC, UPenn) although there are people doing pharmacoepi work all over the place and in various departments and schools - many colleges of medicine, nursing, vet med, pharmacy, pharmacology, and public health have people doing work that falls within pharmacoepi, even if their formal degrees are not just in pharmacoepi. Trainees in these schools can often get some experience in pharmacoepi by working with these people and I think a MPH in epi by someone with a pharm background of some sort (MD, PharmD, maybe nursing) can be a nice entry into the field. There are also HMOs, insurance companies, and regulatory agencies (FDA being the biggy, though it's arguably had a rocky history) where people are doing pharmacoepi work for those interested in private or government work.
 
Pharmacoepi is big, and I know of someone who was in the pharmacoepi PhD program at Maryland (not an accredited ASPH/CEPH school of public health, but a strong epi program) and worked at a top pharma company in the epi department. I did my MPH at Drexel and interned at the same company during school. I probably could have stayed but I was applying to med school -- but I'll probably go back someday. Two other people from my program are now at that same company -- one in the epi department, and the other is now working on the clinical trials side after starting in the epi dept. The former concentrated in epi, but the latter concentrated in community health/prevention.

As someone else mentioned, health management/policy is also big. If you have an interest in health finances, then cost-effectiveness analyses are always big with pharmaceutical companies; you need to make your financial case for developing and producing a drug. A backgroun in health economics is therefore valuable.

In terms of the job market, it's true that not all pharma companies will value epidemiologists as much, but just ask those questions when you go interviewing. Every company needs to know about the distribution of the diseases they are developing drugs/vaccines for, whether it's erectile dysfunction or HIV or ovarian cancer, so every company will hire epidemiologists. You may have better luck with a PhD than an MPH; it depends on the company. At the company I worked at, they were fairly willing to pay for you to get your PhD once you got started. Good luck, and feel free to PM me if you have any questions or want details.
 
Thanks you Adcadet and hwong14 for all the information you provided on this new field, i would certainly like to explore more this concentration. Which all universities have accredited courses and which all have MPH or PhD?
Hwong sent you a PM please check it out, really need to know more and more of this wonderful field!
 
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greaper said:
Thanks you Adcadet and hwong14 for all the information you provided on this new field, i would certainly like to explore more this concentration. Which all universities have accredited courses and which all have MPH or PhD?
Hwong sent you a PM please check it out, really need to know more and more of this wonderful field!
Cross-reference the the Int. Society for Pharmacoepi with the Council on Education for Public Health and/or Assoc. of Schools of Public Health list of accredited/member schools.
 
Thanks Adcadet for the advice on cross reference.
Here is the list of all schools that provide pharmacoepi as an academic program. Hope it helps others interested in this field:

Academic Programs
Center for Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Harvard School of Public Health
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Slone Epidemiology Center, Boston University
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Washington
 
Hi All,
I have been told by a few public health/pre-professional career advisors that an MPH with a few years of laboratory experience out of school can also get you into the pharma companies...don't know how great of a position...but its something that a small percentage of graduating MPHs seem to do.


:luck:
 
greaper said:
I am very much interested to join the Pharma line after completing my MPH. Which concentration of MPH is best suited for the pharmaceutical line and jobs.
Which all colleges have campus placements for it. What all concentrations can land me a job in this sector.
Please help me guys, pros and cons welcome!
If that is your goal, you are way better off with an MBA and have way more options and open doors. Or if you are ambitious you can always do the MPH/MBA dual degree that a lot of universities offer.
 
MD2b20004 said:
If that is your goal, you are way better off with an MBA and have way more options and open doors. Or if you are ambitious you can always do the MPH/MBA dual degree that a lot of universities offer.

If you're interested in pharmacoepi, what would be the purpose of getting an MBA?
 
Check out Pfizer's (now merged with Johnson & Johnson's) description of different public health fields at

advancing healthy populations: the pfizer guide to careers in public health