As the public health landscape continues to shift, there is one question every public health student should ask:
How do I not suck as a public health student?
Seriously.
If you’re like me, you may have entered public health from a biology or pre-med background. You always wanted to help people, but you didn’t necessarily know public health was a career option.
Then you found a field spanning epidemiology, policy, community health, data, communications, healthcare, nonprofits, government, consulting, philanthropy, and much more.
That’s exciting. It’s also overwhelming.
Because earning the degree is only part of preparing for a career in public health.
The students best positioned for the future workforce will combine public health knowledge with practical skills, real-world experiences, relationships, and the ability to communicate what they know.
Here are seven ways to start.
1. The Identity Crisis: You’re Not Failed Pre-Med
Too many public health students enter the field carrying secondhand imposter syndrome.
You thought you were going to become a physician. For whatever reason, that changed, and now you’re in public health. Sometimes we treat that transition as though public health were the consolation prize.
It isn’t.
Clinical medicine often asks: How do we help this patient?
Public health allows us to ask: Why are thousands of people experiencing this problem, and what can we change about the systems producing it?
You might improve a policy affecting thousands of people, design a community program, analyze data that changes how resources are distributed, or help build healthier systems.
That’s meaningful work.
Stop apologizing for not being pre-med. Learn to talk confidently about why you’re in public health, what you’re interested in, and what you hope to contribute.
You didn’t “end up” in public health.
You’re building a career in public health. Own it.
2. The Skills Gap Nobody Warns You About
One of the biggest challenges in transitioning from student to professional is moving from knowing things to being able to do things.
Your classes teach you the foundations.
Employers eventually want to know: What can you actually do with them?
Depending on your career path, that might mean:
- Creating surveys or community assessments
- Using R, SAS, SQL, NVIVO or GIS
- Analyzing and visualizing data
- Conducting qualitative analysis
- Evaluating a program
- Facilitating meetings
- Building dashboards
- Presenting findings
You don’t need to master everything. But you should graduate with skills you can demonstrate.
There’s a big difference between:
“I took a biostatistics course.”
and:
“I analyzed a dataset examining health disparities and presented recommendations based on the findings.”
One tells me what class you took. The other tells me what you can do.
Use university workshops and resources, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, YouTube, research projects, and your own curiosity to fill the gaps your curriculum doesn’t cover.
Your degree gets stronger when practical skills are attached to it.
3. Get Outside The Classroom
You have a limited amount of time as a public health student. Use it strategically.
Internships, practicums, research positions, volunteer experiences, and student organizations give you something the classroom can’t:
Proof that you can operate in the real world.
Don’t collect experiences just to fill your resume. Look for opportunities where you can eventually say: I helped do that. This was the impact.
Maybe you analyzed survey data, conducted community interviews, evaluated a program, created health education materials, wrote part of a grant, or presented findings to leadership.
Those become stories you can tell in interviews.
Whenever possible, leave with an artifact too: a presentation, dashboard, report, infographic, evaluation, toolkit, or campaign you can discuss later.
A good internship shouldn’t just give you another line on your resume.
It should give you evidence of what you’re capable of doing.
4. Nobody Cares About Your Term Paper
“Your writing sucks.”
My MPH internship supervisor told me some version of this, caringly, during one of my first writing projects.
It was a reality check.
I knew how to write academic papers. But I quickly learned that academic writing and practical public health communication aren’t the same skill.
Your professor might read your 15-page paper.
The county commissioner probably won’t.
Neither will the community member scrolling Instagram or the executive reviewing your proposal between meetings.
Public health professionals often need to take complicated information and make it clear, useful, and actionable.
Instead of:
“The literature demonstrates statistically significant disparities in cardiovascular morbidity among populations experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage.”
You might need:
“People living in lower-income communities are more likely to develop and die from heart disease, in part because of barriers to healthy food, preventive care, and other resources.”
Same knowledge. Different audience. Different framing.
Practice writing policy briefs, one-pagers, community reports, grants, blogs, presentations, and executive summaries.
Write for a student organization. Volunteer with a nonprofit. Turn a class project into a one-page brief.
The goal isn’t to make your writing less intelligent.
It’s to make your intelligence useful to the person reading it.
5. Networking Isn’t Optional, It’s the Job
Public health is relationship-driven.
Communities run on relationships. Partnerships run on relationships. Coalitions run on relationships.
Careers do too.
Networking doesn’t mean adding 5,000 strangers on LinkedIn. It means intentionally learning from people and building relationships over time. Even if that’s only 5 to 10 identified professionals.
Find professionals doing work you’re curious about. Follow their work. Engage thoughtfully. Then reach out.
A simple message works:
“Hi Jordan, I’m an MPH student interested in health policy. I came across your work with [organization] and would love to learn more about your career path. If you’re open to it, I’d appreciate 20 minutes for a virtual informational interview. [Propose times]”
Then be curious. Ask good questions. Follow up. Stay connected.
If you have one meaningful conversation with a public health professional every month during a two-year MPH, you could graduate having learned deeply from 24 professionals across the field.
Your network isn’t just who can get you a job.
It’s the collection of people who teach you what’s possible about public health.
6. Choosing a Focus Without Boxing Yourself In
One of public health’s greatest strengths can also make career planning difficult:
You can do almost anything.
You might pursue epidemiology, biostatistics, policy, global health, environmental health, health administration, community health, health technology, communications, evaluation, consulting, philanthropy, or something you haven’t discovered yet.
You don’t need to know exactly where you’re going. But you should eventually develop a direction.
The key is sampling before specializing.
Interested in epidemiology? Take an advanced course or find a research opportunity.
Curious about policy? Volunteer with an advocacy organization.
Interested in communications? Help an organization translate its work for the public.
Considering health care administration? Talk to someone working in a health system.
Use these experiences to learn:
- I like this.
- I’m good at this.
- I don’t want to do this.
- I didn’t even know this career existed.
Explore broadly. Then start going deeper.
Direction matters more than having your entire career figured out.
7. Turn Outrage Into Output
Maybe you entered public health because you’re frustrated by health inequities, health care access, environmental injustice, racism, or the fact that someone’s ZIP code can influence how long they live.
Good. We need people who care.
But outrage alone isn’t enough.
As a public health student, you have an opportunity to pair that frustration with knowledge, skills, relationships, and action.
And you don’t have to wait until graduation.
Join a local organization. Participate in student advocacy. Attend a city council meeting. Volunteer. Analyze publicly available data. Write about an issue. Create educational content.
Build something.
Public health needs people who can identify what’s wrong.
It desperately needs people who can help make something better.
So don’t spend your entire public health education doom-scrolling every terrible thing happening in the world.
Learn how systems work. Build the skills to change them. Then find somewhere to start.
CLOSING
Your public health degree matters.
But the letters behind your name aren’t the finish line.
When you graduate, you should leave with more than a diploma.
You want knowledge, skills, experiences, relationships, examples of your work, and a better understanding of where you can contribute.
So if you want to not suck as a public health student:
- Stop treating public health like your backup plan.
- Build practical skills alongside theory.
- Get outside the classroom.
- Learn to communicate with actual humans.
- Build relationships before you need them.
- Explore before boxing yourself into one path.
- Turn your frustration into something tangible.
You don’t need your entire career figured out.
You just need to make sure you’re doing more than collecting credits.
Because the goal isn’t simply to become a public health graduate.
The goal is to become a public health professional who is actually prepared to do the work.
If you know a public health student who needs this, send it their way.
And follow The Public Health Millennial for more practical advice to help you learn, navigate, and transform your public health career.