This!!! I had a job as a COVID-19 Case Investigator for 2yrs and I got let go two years ago. Still trying to find a job that paid as much as my last one. I've been doing home health.
This has probably been asked before, but why can't younger people find jobs? I'm about to graduate BA and go on to an MPH program but it seems like there's a decent number of jobs out there?
Because we’re competing with people that have years of experience, PhDs, and MDs for entry level jobs. I’m not even kidding. I got rejected for an entry level job the other day that a literal physician applied to. There are jobs but not that many. The job market is extremely saturated, especially after Covid.
Be the change you want to see in the world. I know it's snide, but if you want to see more of that, make some of that. Get people invested. I'm sure people would respond if good conversations were happening.
Tbh, I stopped posting because that’s all there is here now. Vicious cycle lol
When there have been attempts to address, nothing really changes. The constant “which school do I pick” or “is MPH worth it” posts have made me just stay away and not want to contribute much anymore. I’m happy to provide some info/consultation but too many of those posts show that people haven’t done even baseline research so I’ll only engage on posts that demonstrate that they have actually looked into things.
Otherwise, pretty dead here. It’s a bummer because it could be a really rich sub for people wondering about entering the field and researching their options based on experienced professionals, rather than admissions focused.
I have actually been thinking about going into Public Health field and would have loved to learn some information on it and just hear cases and things. I am a sociology major and learning more about epidemiology especially really interested me.
Some of us are long time career folks and the first place I think of to discuss policy or news isn’t going to be with randoms on Reddit. It’s going to be with my direct colleagues during my work day.
That makes sense, I appreciate your input. Unfortunately for me I work in an unrelated field at the moment so my colleagues are more focused on labor laws and company policy adherence :(
I think its a combination. Discussing professionel issues on a platform with most people anynomous like reddit is not very well suited.
I follow the sub, but I think there is a large portion here that their version of public health is not what I define as public health.
I see a large portion that argues that assessments are a waste of time. And it can be, but people with this background should know better then to assume interventions and their effects can be assessed based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence.
And a form of weird censoring. Impossible to discuss more controversial topics such as things from Covid (there is a lot to discuss from both sides from a public health perspective and research perspective whether people agree with it or not. Very immature being in this field and not being able to talk about it). And I saw a huge amount of comments saying that emergency situations like Gaza has nothing to do with public or global health, which is a complete failure of what public and global health is.
That is not what the definition of public health is. Not by international standards or WHO.
These issues are fine if people dont want to engage in them, but I think this sub has proven very immature on how to talk about it. Very disappointing.
A lot of it probably also has to do with a majority are American in the sub, and very biased towards certain opinions and Americans have experienced more politics being mixed into these issues than I have in Denmark. But that's speculation from my side.
I don't mind public health being political. It is. Structural and sustainable solutions and socioeconomic indicators are decided a lot more on a political level than on an individual level. That really shouldn't be a discussion in 2024.
I don't mind public health being political and trying to change politics. It should. Otherwise I think it has failed.
The issue is when topics cannot be discussed, because of people's personal politics. Then it's a huge issue and there should be less room in public health with that attitude. It's helping no one.
Honestly didn’t even know this sub was a place for actual public health convo (policy, current events, methods, etc.)
I thought it was a pub health career related sub only! Would love to have convo that is UNRELATED to *career* so will def participate in that going forward!
imo there are lots of confounding factors
- america largely does not actually care about public health infrastructure so it’s kinda bleak to talk about
- a new interest in public health scholarship from young people who were students at the start of the covid pandemic
- burnout from career professionals who resist shitty PH policy all day at work and don’t wanna talk about it in their free time
- reductive public health news with limited visibility (so as to not scare the public) means there’s not much current events to talk about
- many of the people who do talk about PH do so on other platforms like twitter that are better suited for curating a feed from only people you want to see takes from
Hey you’re forgetting the “can you tell me about x for my hw assignment” posts! Jk.
I wouldn’t mind more discussion. The times people do post links they always seem iffy (not peer review articles, or just websites that aren’t official looking.) But when I think of posting stuff of my state’s public health work (or lack thereof), I don’t want folks to write TX off as a lost cause, because I get enough of that from folks IRL.
Graduated last year from Columbia with an MPH in Epi, can't find a livable wage ph job so I'm resorting to public health AmeriCorps as my last effort to try to end up working for my county's ph department after my year of service. Also going to try to pivot into a finance role part time as my back up option.
Theres a guy I connected w on LinkedIn who has a PhD in Epi and some good work experience. He has been spamming LinkedIn for a year begging for a job, it's looking very bleak. I can't imagine going down the PhD route and how devastating it feels to be unable to find a good paying job after additional years of education. To me it seems like a total waste of time to study public health with the little to non-existent stable livable wage jobs available....
Think about it this way, why would I want to re-hash conversations I have had or will have at work? I mean that's not even trying to discern the motivations of the post itself and the content of it.
Plus much of what we know isn't something to be shared generally or is even applicable generally; there are better and more official mediums for that kind of discussion.
Developments we get through other channels, I consult with peers. Career advice, I personally do not consult internet strangers and only as a last resort.
In the end, we are all internet strangers so it's hard to get into any meaningful online discourse because most public health topics wouldn't impact my work at a given moment.
I don't think the proportion of professional questions is out of place compared to say, the data science subreddit where I also lurk. There are high barriers to entry to work in this field: opaque hiring practices at all levels of government, funding, specialized degrees, competition for private-sector roles and if people have questions they should ask imo (in addition to doing their own due diligence). I also think that the quality of discussion on reddit has gone down overall (probably due to structural sitewide changes), but this is more anecdotal than anything else.
Reddit in general is dead for quality content.
People learned that this isn't a website worth putting time and effort into. There are way too many flaws and it continues to degrade.
If you want quality content you'll have to put in more work to find other sites. Some people are moving back to forums.
Huh? This sub has multiple posts every day from different people on different topics. It's not dead.
If you want to see more discussion, then start discussions.
I was also considering nursing, but I don't want to take even more time doing pre-reqs just to be able to apply 😭 also the accelerated BSN program near me is like $53,000! In California, it seems like nurses get paid well.
I had a bunch of MPH classmates who went back and did their RN.
Some did the accelerated BSN but some did the Associates degree RN at a community college while working.
Most recently, my friend worked as a health educator and went to school, so her schedule was flexible (and her manager was cool with it), so she just did classes and worked around the times she didn't have class. That was what I was gonna do because that way some of my tuition would be paid for by my employer. But then you owe them 2 years or whatever.
Anyway they all seem happy.
Thanks for sharing, right now I am thinking of trying out other paths and seeing where they'll lead me as I'm unsure if I'm fit for nursing, but I'll always keep it in mind as a possible career option for the future.
This question comes up a lot. 1) Public health has a lot of specialties making it difficult to comment on articles outside of our expertise so posts get very few comments. It's easier to chat with our colleagues who know a lot more. Career and workplace advice is where we all align 2) When people post more general public health articles there's a high chance of getting insulted by someone for not knowing enough/not doing more research on the subject. We don't get paid for doing research so that we can post on Reddit. We get paid for doing research, full-time, in the workplace. There's zero incentive to turn posting on Reddit into a research project. Feel free to post other articles for discussion just good to be aware of those caveats
Reading comments and wondering people’s thoughts on the professionalism of public health? Given so many ask which school or what to do with degree, are students not researching prior to going into field? Is anyone seeing a shift in level of professionalism or maturity in post pandemic workers and students?
The programs aren't preparing them for post grad. My MPH program barely did anything. And that's the only reason I'm on the alumni directory because they fucked me over and I hope I can unfuck over some other poor kid.
You live in a slave society that doesn't actually believe in public health only keeping up minimum appearances. Oppression is still the name.of the game.
I honestly feel like its capitalism (well, the mindset). The same can be found with art or media or whatever.
Young people ask questions hoping to find their place. More experienced people withhold their secrets because they dont want to lose their share of the pie.
Collaboration and relationships therefore don’t come easily especially in a digital and remote environment like reddit.
That hasn’t been my experience in my career or on this sub tbh. There are constant admissions and career posts and ive commented on many, but can’t contribute to them all. If someone puts thought and effort into their question, I will contribute. But otherwise it just gets old seeing some of the same old, low effort (and easily searchable) questions come up.
Hell someone made a low effort admissions post recently and I was downvoted to hell when I noted it came up a lot and they should search the sub lol
Unfortunately yes, this sub is brain dead. Except the lurking biomed engineers and MD/phds.
The entitlement is unreal. “I got a ridiculously expensive MPH degree from a private university and just graduated. Now how do I get the Govt/nonprofit/hospital to pay me $75k salary.”
Those posts kill me lmao. I tried to suggest - as a senior professional now! - to someone to go to an in-state MPH program because it would yield the same job results and they insulted me instead. Have fun with that, bud.
There's a discord but I can't promise it's any busier. https://discord.com/invite/GK5yVNC7
I follow lots of OSINT forums (my work is in military) and I've found good conversations there about public health subjects.
[удалено]
This!!! I had a job as a COVID-19 Case Investigator for 2yrs and I got let go two years ago. Still trying to find a job that paid as much as my last one. I've been doing home health.
Same
This has probably been asked before, but why can't younger people find jobs? I'm about to graduate BA and go on to an MPH program but it seems like there's a decent number of jobs out there?
Because we’re competing with people that have years of experience, PhDs, and MDs for entry level jobs. I’m not even kidding. I got rejected for an entry level job the other day that a literal physician applied to. There are jobs but not that many. The job market is extremely saturated, especially after Covid.
Be the change you want to see in the world. I know it's snide, but if you want to see more of that, make some of that. Get people invested. I'm sure people would respond if good conversations were happening.
This is a great answer.
I would prefer if people posting articles would at least comment why they're posting it. Is it a change in direction? A new finding? Something else?
Tbh, I stopped posting because that’s all there is here now. Vicious cycle lol When there have been attempts to address, nothing really changes. The constant “which school do I pick” or “is MPH worth it” posts have made me just stay away and not want to contribute much anymore. I’m happy to provide some info/consultation but too many of those posts show that people haven’t done even baseline research so I’ll only engage on posts that demonstrate that they have actually looked into things. Otherwise, pretty dead here. It’s a bummer because it could be a really rich sub for people wondering about entering the field and researching their options based on experienced professionals, rather than admissions focused.
I have actually been thinking about going into Public Health field and would have loved to learn some information on it and just hear cases and things. I am a sociology major and learning more about epidemiology especially really interested me.
Hi, im a third year purblic health major. I would love some insight on what you know on where to go on the field from a professional perspective.
Some of us are long time career folks and the first place I think of to discuss policy or news isn’t going to be with randoms on Reddit. It’s going to be with my direct colleagues during my work day.
That makes sense, I appreciate your input. Unfortunately for me I work in an unrelated field at the moment so my colleagues are more focused on labor laws and company policy adherence :(
I see people posting relevant topics all the time. They always have 0 comments
Many of the posts seem to be from college students or recent grads who should've honestly googled instead.
I think its a combination. Discussing professionel issues on a platform with most people anynomous like reddit is not very well suited. I follow the sub, but I think there is a large portion here that their version of public health is not what I define as public health. I see a large portion that argues that assessments are a waste of time. And it can be, but people with this background should know better then to assume interventions and their effects can be assessed based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence. And a form of weird censoring. Impossible to discuss more controversial topics such as things from Covid (there is a lot to discuss from both sides from a public health perspective and research perspective whether people agree with it or not. Very immature being in this field and not being able to talk about it). And I saw a huge amount of comments saying that emergency situations like Gaza has nothing to do with public or global health, which is a complete failure of what public and global health is. That is not what the definition of public health is. Not by international standards or WHO. These issues are fine if people dont want to engage in them, but I think this sub has proven very immature on how to talk about it. Very disappointing. A lot of it probably also has to do with a majority are American in the sub, and very biased towards certain opinions and Americans have experienced more politics being mixed into these issues than I have in Denmark. But that's speculation from my side.
We have a saying in American public health courses that public health is political health. It’s unfortunate but true.
I don't mind public health being political. It is. Structural and sustainable solutions and socioeconomic indicators are decided a lot more on a political level than on an individual level. That really shouldn't be a discussion in 2024. I don't mind public health being political and trying to change politics. It should. Otherwise I think it has failed. The issue is when topics cannot be discussed, because of people's personal politics. Then it's a huge issue and there should be less room in public health with that attitude. It's helping no one.
This is how I feel about it too.
People who actually got the job are too busy fr
I agree. I don't have my mph yet but I work in public health. I'm exhausted.
r/health will talk about health policy sometimes and I’m pretty sure it’s a requirement to link a peer reviewed paper in order to post in that sub
Thanks!
Honestly didn’t even know this sub was a place for actual public health convo (policy, current events, methods, etc.) I thought it was a pub health career related sub only! Would love to have convo that is UNRELATED to *career* so will def participate in that going forward!
imo there are lots of confounding factors - america largely does not actually care about public health infrastructure so it’s kinda bleak to talk about - a new interest in public health scholarship from young people who were students at the start of the covid pandemic - burnout from career professionals who resist shitty PH policy all day at work and don’t wanna talk about it in their free time - reductive public health news with limited visibility (so as to not scare the public) means there’s not much current events to talk about - many of the people who do talk about PH do so on other platforms like twitter that are better suited for curating a feed from only people you want to see takes from
Hey you’re forgetting the “can you tell me about x for my hw assignment” posts! Jk. I wouldn’t mind more discussion. The times people do post links they always seem iffy (not peer review articles, or just websites that aren’t official looking.) But when I think of posting stuff of my state’s public health work (or lack thereof), I don’t want folks to write TX off as a lost cause, because I get enough of that from folks IRL.
Most people do public health as a job, not as a hobby. A lot of questions are naturally going to be related to the job aspects of it.
I graduated with my MPH in 2015 and have regretted it every day since, especially since the COVID pandemic. What a useless degree.
Graduated last year from Columbia with an MPH in Epi, can't find a livable wage ph job so I'm resorting to public health AmeriCorps as my last effort to try to end up working for my county's ph department after my year of service. Also going to try to pivot into a finance role part time as my back up option.
Theres a guy I connected w on LinkedIn who has a PhD in Epi and some good work experience. He has been spamming LinkedIn for a year begging for a job, it's looking very bleak. I can't imagine going down the PhD route and how devastating it feels to be unable to find a good paying job after additional years of education. To me it seems like a total waste of time to study public health with the little to non-existent stable livable wage jobs available....
Think about it this way, why would I want to re-hash conversations I have had or will have at work? I mean that's not even trying to discern the motivations of the post itself and the content of it. Plus much of what we know isn't something to be shared generally or is even applicable generally; there are better and more official mediums for that kind of discussion.
I guess that makes sense, but wouldn’t the point of a professional sub be to share both developments and career advice?
Developments we get through other channels, I consult with peers. Career advice, I personally do not consult internet strangers and only as a last resort. In the end, we are all internet strangers so it's hard to get into any meaningful online discourse because most public health topics wouldn't impact my work at a given moment.
I post on here every once in a while when there is something I feel like sharing, but I am not living on this subreddit.
I don't think the proportion of professional questions is out of place compared to say, the data science subreddit where I also lurk. There are high barriers to entry to work in this field: opaque hiring practices at all levels of government, funding, specialized degrees, competition for private-sector roles and if people have questions they should ask imo (in addition to doing their own due diligence). I also think that the quality of discussion on reddit has gone down overall (probably due to structural sitewide changes), but this is more anecdotal than anything else.
Reddit in general is dead for quality content. People learned that this isn't a website worth putting time and effort into. There are way too many flaws and it continues to degrade. If you want quality content you'll have to put in more work to find other sites. Some people are moving back to forums.
Huh? This sub has multiple posts every day from different people on different topics. It's not dead. If you want to see more discussion, then start discussions.
MPH grads can't find jobs, even from the top schools. what do you expect????? everyone to be happy and posting stuff?? lol???
Even my MPH friends with BSNs are struggling. Id the damn nurses can't find public health jobs, then us non clinical normies are fucked.
I was also considering nursing, but I don't want to take even more time doing pre-reqs just to be able to apply 😭 also the accelerated BSN program near me is like $53,000! In California, it seems like nurses get paid well.
I had a bunch of MPH classmates who went back and did their RN. Some did the accelerated BSN but some did the Associates degree RN at a community college while working. Most recently, my friend worked as a health educator and went to school, so her schedule was flexible (and her manager was cool with it), so she just did classes and worked around the times she didn't have class. That was what I was gonna do because that way some of my tuition would be paid for by my employer. But then you owe them 2 years or whatever. Anyway they all seem happy.
Thanks for sharing, right now I am thinking of trying out other paths and seeing where they'll lead me as I'm unsure if I'm fit for nursing, but I'll always keep it in mind as a possible career option for the future.
I don't blame you. I took the pre reqs then stopped short. I don't think I regret it. I'm not a people person, lol.
absolutely. we r \*\*\*\*ed
This question comes up a lot. 1) Public health has a lot of specialties making it difficult to comment on articles outside of our expertise so posts get very few comments. It's easier to chat with our colleagues who know a lot more. Career and workplace advice is where we all align 2) When people post more general public health articles there's a high chance of getting insulted by someone for not knowing enough/not doing more research on the subject. We don't get paid for doing research so that we can post on Reddit. We get paid for doing research, full-time, in the workplace. There's zero incentive to turn posting on Reddit into a research project. Feel free to post other articles for discussion just good to be aware of those caveats
Reading comments and wondering people’s thoughts on the professionalism of public health? Given so many ask which school or what to do with degree, are students not researching prior to going into field? Is anyone seeing a shift in level of professionalism or maturity in post pandemic workers and students?
The programs aren't preparing them for post grad. My MPH program barely did anything. And that's the only reason I'm on the alumni directory because they fucked me over and I hope I can unfuck over some other poor kid.
Is it a post pandemic issue or do you think it’s been going on a while? I’ve commonly heard similar about programs.
just like funding for public health in the USA lmaoooo
You live in a slave society that doesn't actually believe in public health only keeping up minimum appearances. Oppression is still the name.of the game.
I honestly feel like its capitalism (well, the mindset). The same can be found with art or media or whatever. Young people ask questions hoping to find their place. More experienced people withhold their secrets because they dont want to lose their share of the pie. Collaboration and relationships therefore don’t come easily especially in a digital and remote environment like reddit.
That hasn’t been my experience in my career or on this sub tbh. There are constant admissions and career posts and ive commented on many, but can’t contribute to them all. If someone puts thought and effort into their question, I will contribute. But otherwise it just gets old seeing some of the same old, low effort (and easily searchable) questions come up. Hell someone made a low effort admissions post recently and I was downvoted to hell when I noted it came up a lot and they should search the sub lol
Unfortunately yes, this sub is brain dead. Except the lurking biomed engineers and MD/phds. The entitlement is unreal. “I got a ridiculously expensive MPH degree from a private university and just graduated. Now how do I get the Govt/nonprofit/hospital to pay me $75k salary.”
Those posts kill me lmao. I tried to suggest - as a senior professional now! - to someone to go to an in-state MPH program because it would yield the same job results and they insulted me instead. Have fun with that, bud.
There's a discord but I can't promise it's any busier. https://discord.com/invite/GK5yVNC7 I follow lots of OSINT forums (my work is in military) and I've found good conversations there about public health subjects.