Public Health / Epi without clinical degree - need advice!

[Galia]

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Any thoughts will be highly appreciated...

I have a BA in sociology and MBA, and I am in mid career situation in consumer analytics. I was considering switching to psychology, so started assisting in research part-time. After a while I ended up in psychiatric epidemiology and now I am realizing this might be my cup of tea. Just the fact there are people who can comfortably put 'Axis 1' and ‘price elasticity’ in one sentence is worth a million dollars. 🙂

I am suspecting, though, that doing a MPH will not add much, given I do not have a clinical degree (I have to accommodate age/experience factor, so I suspect entry level jobs for master-level graduates will not work… both for employee and for me). Also because MPH seems to overlap in some areas with MBA. Does that make sense or I am off?

So I am thinking about PhD level, but not finding much information about it (besides schools websites and admission counselors). Are there any resources/forums people could recommend?

I do not want to pursue a pure academic career, also think it is too late anyway…. - so the question is which PhD programs are more applied? Is there any demand outside of academia for people with PhD in public health or epidemiology (but without clinical degree)? And specifically, in psychiatry/mental health. I know this is a very narrow specialization - so talking about ‘typical’ is probably hard, but if somebody could come up with a ‘typical’ job example that would really help.

Thanks, I know these are lots of questions…

 

[thirdclius]

have you read the sticky?
REgarding MPH, I always thought of it as an enhancer of degrees. I've had a few classmates who were MDs/DOs, and I'm pretty sure there are other people with advanced/professional degrees that acquire MPH as well.

Also, there's a Doctorate in Public Health degrees (DrPH) which is more an applied degree rather than an academic doctorate degree. Unfortunately I don't know much since I am a lowly MPH student. I think it will be best to talk to a professor in a public health school somewhere unless someone who has more experience and knowledge than me can reply to you. Also schools have different emphases on their epi programs as some schools' program are epi and infectious diseases, or epi and chronic diseases. It maybe good to contact an epi program that has research on epi and psych. Or if you have time and money, I recommend that you attend American Public Health Associations' Convention. That may help you a lot in looking for schools and in talking to people in public health both in academia and in practice. It'll be in Boston this year though. Or if you don't have the time, you can just research on the schools and contact professors via email.

Any thoughts will be highly appreciated...

I have a BA in sociology and MBA, and I am in mid career (VP level) situation in consumer analytics. I was considering switching to psychology, so started assisting in research part-time. After a while I ended up in psychiatric epidemiology and now I am realizing this might be my cup of tea. Just the fact there are people who can comfortably put 'Axis 1' and ‘price elasticity’ in one sentence is worth a million dollars. 🙂

I am suspecting, though, that doing a MPH will not add much, given I do not have a clinical degree (I have to accommodate age/experience factor, so I suspect entry level jobs for master-level graduates will not work… both for employee and for me). Also because MPH seems to overlap in some areas with MBA. Does that make sense or I am off?

So I am thinking about PhD level, but not finding much information about it (besides schools websites and admission counselors). Are there any resources/forums people could recommend?

I do not want to pursue a pure academic career, also think it is too late anyway…. - so the question is which PhD programs are more applied? Is there any demand outside of academia for people with PhD in public health or epidemiology (but without clinical degree)? And specifically, in psychiatry/mental health. I know this is a very narrow specialization - so talking about ‘typical’ is probably hard, but if somebody could come up with a ‘typical’ job example that would really help.

Thanks, I know these are lots of questions…

 

[Galia]

Thank you so much! I am looking through the links from the sticky, they are very helpful. Was not used to get good info from 'official' sources, for psychology informal/thread way always worked better. The convention is a great suggestion, I looked it up and they have tons of stuff on mental health on that conference so I am thinking about attending.

As for MPH being the enhancer degree – this is exactly where my issue is. MBA is also kind of enhancer degree in the sense it is very general, but not any kind of specialized training. So adding MPH on top of it does not feel same as adding MPH on top of clinical degree. Unless I am making gross mistake in my thinking. But will look more into Public Health degrees (DrPH).

 

[thirdclius]

I also misread your post, I thought you wrote that you already have an advanced degree in psych. Oops..
BTW, the convention is a great event. So many things happening at once. I went to the job fair and it's sensory overload for me. There's a student section with student presentors (great opportunity to talk to students from schools you may be interested in) and there's also a college fair (great opportunity to talk to faculty).
There may be other programs with DrPH of clinical nature, but the only one I know is Loma Linda University. They have a preventive care DrPH which is a more clinically-oriented DrPH. Loma Linda also has a joint degree of DrPH/PsyD (clinical) and other stuff. Here are some links:
- to the DrPH program
http://www.llu.edu/llu/sph/hpro/progs.html

-to our program bulletin
http://www.llu.edu/llu/documents/sph-bulletin0405.pdf


I'm just trying to help you here, I don't belong to Loma Linda School of Public health staff. If you have any more questions about Loma Linda, PM me and I'll try to answer it the best as I can.

Thank you so much! I am looking through the links from the sticky, they are very helpful. Was not used to get good info from 'official' sources, for psychology informal/thread way always worked better. The convention is a great suggestion, I looked it up and they have tons of stuff on mental health on that conference so I am thinking about attending.

As for MPH being the enhancer degree – this is exactly where my issue is. MBA is also kind of enhancer degree in the sense it is very general, but not any kind of specialized training. So adding MPH on top of it does not feel same as adding MPH on top of clinical degree. Unless I am making gross mistake in my thinking. But will look more into Public Health degrees (DrPH).

edit: just to correct a few of many grammatical errors

 

[Adcadet]

Any thoughts will be highly appreciated...

I have a BA in sociology and MBA, and I am in mid career (VP level) situation in consumer analytics. I was considering switching to psychology, so started assisting in research part-time. After a while I ended up in psychiatric epidemiology and now I am realizing this might be my cup of tea. Just the fact there are people who can comfortably put 'Axis 1' and ‘price elasticity’ in one sentence is worth a million dollars. 🙂

I am suspecting, though, that doing a MPH will not add much, given I do not have a clinical degree (I have to accommodate age/experience factor, so I suspect entry level jobs for master-level graduates will not work… both for employee and for me). Also because MPH seems to overlap in some areas with MBA. Does that make sense or I am off?

From working with the MPHA students, I would agree that some of the MPH might overlap with an MBA, but probably not much if you're talking about an epi MPH. However, I think a PhD or DrPH would get your more distance with potential employers than an MPH. Given that you don't seem that interested in academics I would look into the DrPH more than a PhD. Also, it seems you are likely to track towards industry (pharma), federal and state agencies (state dept of health, CDC, FDA, etc), and maybe some of the activist organizations. For many of those I think the MBA would be seen as helpful in addition to whatever public health degree you had, by the way. I would ask those potential employers. But if you're looking to be "in charge" and not following someone else's lead, I think a doctoral-level degree would almost be required. Just some thoughts. I may be way off here, as my focus is clearly different from yours.

 

[Galia]

Thanks, this was helpful since I do not have other good venues to check my line of thinking.

The only remaining question - do you feel in any of the organizations you mentioned (i.e. industry (pharma), federal and state agencies (state dept of health, CDC, FDA, etc), and maybe some of the activist organizations) there can be demand for DrPH of a mental health concentration?

 

[jules922]

You should definitely investigate Columbia University's psychiatric epi program - they offer a DrPH (which is meant for people who don't want to primarily do research). The chair of the epi dept. is a huge name in psych epi (and a great guy too!).
p.s. I'm an MPH student at Columbia, but not in epi

 

[drrajjesh]

Dear galia
you can join MPH, and even for non clinical fellow there are scope for MPH,I am a veterinarian doing MPH, my classmate is from Nebraska,she was simply BSc in Biology, and others too
specially person who has done some in social science has a great future after MPH
but i am not able to link socail science, MBA and MPH all three
probably you can go for health management or some thing manement of non clinical field of health system
Regards