What is "public health work experience"?

[agh2415]

I see a lot of schools listing public health experience as a preferred admission requirement.

What exactly qualifies as relevant public health experience and what are some examples? It seems like such a broad term that you can say a lot things are public health related

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[Epi2013]

From my understanding, you can turn just about any community service or volunteer work into public health experience based on how you talk about it in your personal statement. You can also have experiences that are more direct like public health research or a job in public health.

It may depend on what the particular school deems to be public health, but I didn't have a public health job until this past winter and I got into 3 pretty good schools already. I hope that helps a little.

 

[ebp]

I see a lot of schools listing public health experience as a preferred admission requirement.

What exactly qualifies as relevant public health experience and what are some examples? It seems like such a broad term that you can say a lot things are public health related

I think it's also more important to have experience that's directly related to what you want to do. Having general public health experience just to have it may not be super helpful. Since programs are interested in what you want out of and what you want to do with the degree, it's going to be helpful if you have prior experience showing you're serious about it.

For example, I have 3 years experience working on a reproductive health hotline. I think that's public health experience, although it wasn't public health in the sense of working in a hospital or health center. I want to do family planning work with my degree, so my prior work experience shows (in my opinion) that I know exactly and have experience in what I want to do post MPH.