Why Physicians Pursue a Masters in Public Health

By pursuing a Masters in Public Health (MPH), physicians create opportunities to expand the scope of their influence. While individual patient treatment is important and rewarding, a physician can potentially have a greater impact by transitioning into the public health field.

With a public health master’s degree, you may gain access to government and healthcare system positions that shape health policies for everyone. A doctor with a passion for community health promotion and reform can become an influential health leader with the help of a master’s level education in public health.

Let’s explore the reasons why a physician might want to pursue a Masters in Public Health, including the roles they can fulfill with the help of this postgraduate qualification.

How can a physician do a Masters in Public Health degree?

For future physicians seeking to expand the scope of their medical education with a Masters in Public Health degree, you need to first gain the necessary degree in medical school. You can research medical schools that offer either separate public health education or combine both M.D. and MPH programs.

Many working doctors and physicians have hectic schedules that do not allow changes to pursue educational opportunities. However, you can earn a public health degree online if you cannot attend classes in person. Online MPH degrees are designed for working professionals and can be completed 100% online on a part-time basis while you continue to work full-time.

Comparison between a physician and a public health professional

Where a doctor or a physician treats individuals that are already sick, a public health professional prevents the overall population from getting sick or injured in the first place. They promote healthy lifestyle habits and bring awareness to the community health concerns. They conduct scientific research to analyze a healthcare issue better and devise better plans to tackle it.

To illustrate, MPH career opportunities include public health administration, epidemiology, community and NGO roles, public health consultancy, clinical research roles, and hospital administration.

Public health professionals perform vaccinations, spread awareness of certain diseases, conduct seminars or webinars, warn the public against the consumption of tobacco or alcohol and do so much more to safeguard the community’s overall health. For children, they even help develop a proper nutrition program to get the best out of their growing years. They track the outbreak or spread of disease in the community, discover and prohibit factors that cause the spread of a disease and advocate laws that support better health, like a ban on in-door smoking and following S.O.P.’s.

Public health is even more critical during the pandemic

Engaging in public health has become even more critical with the outbreak of COVID-19. This disease has shown how much an outbreak can damage public health, not to mention disrupt whole nations and severely affect thriving economies.

A doctor can better the lives of a few individuals, but a public health individual can reach so many more people. Whole communities rely on them to safeguard them against such communicable diseases and their impact.

Public health mastery enhances the skills of a physician

A masters in public health teaches critical thinking skills that enhance physicians’ capability. It makes them more adaptable and, as a result, become better at caring for the population. They have a better understanding of how their decisions for individual patients impact an entire community. They can look at the bigger picture and adjust their practice for the better.

A healthy community requires more than just medications when they get sick. They require safe food for consumption, clean drinking water, non-polluted air to breathe, and an effective waste management system. All these things and more are the purviews of public health professionals. They enable individuals and the masses to live their quality life while contributing to the overall betterment of their society.

MPH bridges the gap between patient and community for a physician

An MPH allows physicians to think about each individual patient in the context of the whole community while also considering the wider implications of care. This broader perspective is vital to a community because the cost of medical care for an illness or a group of illnesses is not finite, and the funding stream for the treatment(s) is not infinite.

A public health worker’s reach extends beyond a physician’s

In the larger world, public health initiatives have allowed healthcare professionals to curb polio occurrence in South Asian countries, Haiti’s cholera outbreak after the 2010 earthquake, and even prevent the spread of malaria in Tanzania. So many illnesses, like typhus, smallpox, and polio, are almost unheard of in progressive nations, largely in part thanks to public health vaccination programs and awareness campaigns.

Tobacco advertisement is largely prohibited in almost every country in the world, again, thanks to the initiatives taken by public health professionals. Their efforts helped establish smoke-free zones and ban their marketing over the television, billboards, or the internet. They have even successfully campaigned for seat-belt usage in automobiles and needle-exchange programs.

The impact physicians can make with public health initiatives

A master’s degree in public health teaches physicians, clinicians, and various medical researchers the skills to negotiate with and speak the language of policymakers. Often policymakers do not have firsthand experience in understanding the real workings of the health system, and that’s where they err.

That’s why it is the responsibility of the clinicians and medical researchers to advocate and guide collective policies having the potential to impact community health greatly. Scarcity of food and water, overpopulation, reliance on fossil fuels are some of the issues that can be solved with cooperation between policymakers and physicians with mastery in public health.

Personal satisfaction

Physicians can do a lot for their patients, but they are limited to only one or a few patients at a time. On the other hand, a public healthcare professional has a much broader population to care about.

When you prove instrumental in passing a new reform that immensely improves the health of a wider community, it will bring that much greater satisfaction to your heart. Not to mention the joy a person gets from helping others keeps countless mental health problems at bay. Too few people feel personal satisfaction in their work nowadays, but public health workers do.

A physician with a Masters in Public Health has opportunities to do clinical and scientific or medical research. In multiple ways, a combination of both degrees will allow a physician to reap the benefits of a Master’s in Public Health throughout their career.