What Is the Field of Public Health? My Journey to Find It
As I was filtering through and categorizing questions and topics, I realized that not everyone is in this field of public health or in a position learning about it. I could simply define the field as the science of protecting and promoting the health of a population, but there are some complexities and misconceptions to unpack. What better way to explain what public health really is than to share about how I learned and knew that this was my forever path.
From a very young age, I knew I had a heart for helping others and serving the nations, but I also loved science, math, and health. I had vivid dreams as a kid of going to help in different countries and would wake my parents up with a globe to show them where I went. As a teenager, I used my significant teen birthdays as fundraisers to help others. I’d tell my friends to bring cash instead of gifts, and then I used the money to purchase supplies for people experiencing homelessness in cities around me.
I knew there had to be some path that combined my heart to serve the nations, health, science, math, and helping others. In high school, every aptitude test I took always suggested that I should become a physician. Teachers and mentors directed me to either nursing or medicine with the idea that I could pursue some form of missions work with either of those degrees. Back in my high school days (over 20+ years ago!), those were the common, straight pathways if a person had an interest in health. I knew health was a component of my future and international travel, but I didn’t have the language or insight to articulate what that meant.
I ended up completing a pre-nursing program and started college early in my last year of high school. During that season, I worked as a medical assistant and was also trained as a phlebotomist and EKG tech to gain experience in hospital settings and labs. While I thoroughly enjoyed those, I knew I was missing something, specifically with an international focus. I went on to study at a midwifery college that taught us how to establish maternity clinics in other countries. Sadly, the last 6 months of clinicals in my program were interrupted by tribal wars, and our cohort was paused. I had to make a decision to wait it out or keep pursuing more education. Obviously, I’m not the type to sit around and wait, so I immediately enrolled at the local state university to at least fulfill more units while I waited for the rest of my clinical placements to be safe.
Long story short, I fell in love with learning even more! I was a pre-med major (biology) and felt like I came alive with each new piece of information I learned. For a short time, I thought the aptitude tests and suggested path of medicine could be right for me, but there was a tension I could not reconcile in my heart. I kept picturing this larger dream of helping communities in many nations. At this point, I was working as a pre- and post-op medical assistant at a hospital. While I loved getting to know patients, I couldn’t quite calculate how to help more people if my time was drawn out going from one room to the next. How could I ever reach communities and countries? *(Please note that this was just my personal tension with the way my gifts and skillsets are wired. Not everyone is called to the same profession or path. Some people work as nurses, physicians, and medical assistants in hospitals working with one patient at a time and do an excellent job at that! We need those positions to care for us when we are sick, and some people are so gifted in that intense one-on-one patient care. I’m so grateful for those frontline workers and how they help restore health.)* Deep down inside I wrestled with the time it took for one-on-one care and a desire to reach communities, but I didn’t have the knowledge to articulate what I was trying to process.
My lightbulb moment that changed the entire trajectory of my life happened when I went to a health conference at UCLA. Looking back, I wish I had taken notes on who the professor was who was speaking, but I didn’t realize she would have such profound words for me. This professor was an epidemiologist with a fiery personality. She was explaining what the field of public health was and how science, math, and health promotion could be used to help populations! She was speaking straight to my heart! I’ll never forget when she said, “A public health professional is to a community, as to what a physician is to a single patient at a time.” That was my answer and where I knew I needed to be. I knew I needed to get trained and work in public health. From that day forward, I got the paperwork needed and changed my major to public health.
The next 10+ years of my life were spent in education training in public health. I fell in love with the concept of preventing disease before it happened. Biostatistics and epidemiology felt like a natural language that awakened me as I could see stories come alive in numbers, trends, and data. Understanding the burden of disease, health promotion, disease prevention, and disease distribution spoke deep to my soul as I learned how to help communities and countries. The precision in data collection, using the appropriate statistical test, interpreting the results, learning a story through numbers, and bringing that back full circle to help a community actually brought me such joy and was life-giving. The more I learned, the more I wanted to help others.
Did you know that genetics only account for about 20% of our health?! The other 80% is a culmination of our own choices, where we live, access to care, and what we call the determinants of health. Did you know that the US spends 95% of its health budget on sick care and treatment instead of prevention and wellness? We have systems stuck in cycles of treating the sick instead of helping everyone live healthy lives and preventing disease. Imagine if that budget was flipped or even just split in half (I wouldn’t want anyone sick to go without care). Imagine if our health budget actually created public health programs that prevented disease and improved wellbeing and quality of life. What if our hospitals were just filled with patients who had illnesses that were genetic, not preventable, or with emergencies? What if people were educated on disease prevention and actually had the resources and access to eat healthier? Did you know that the zip code you are born in can impact your life expectancy by 15 years?! That’s in the US where we have functional hospitals and care providers. Where you are born should not determine how soon you die or if you can access food or healthcare or clean water or many other determinants of health. Every person deserves a chance to live a healthy life, but that can’t happen if our (US) systems are built on sick care or if resources are not made available (international).
I’m so grateful for my professors, mentors, and the unique path that led me to learn about public health. I look back at my education and even the opportunities given to me to conduct tobacco research as an undergrad, to study malaria prevention and international organizational development within a business degree, and the gift of my PhD program that allowed me to go deeper in global health and HIV research after working at CDC. I feel forever indebted and thankful for that courageous and fiery Epi professor at UCLA who boldly defined public health for me and helped me see the path for how my brain was naturally wired.
Public health is the science of protecting and promoting the health of a population. It has an emphasis on disease prevention and health promotion, not sick care. It also focuses on populations and communities, not one-on-one care. The field also develops policies and regulations to help improve health outcomes. (Think of seat belt laws and cities that are smoke-free. Those are public health laws and policies researched and implemented by public health professionals.) The umbrella of public health systems includes hospital systems, disease screening, access to care, prevention, and more working together. Public health professionals can usually be identified by having a public health degree such as an MPH or PhD (training in epidemiology, biostatistics, health behavior theory, global health, etc.) and the common credentials are CHES (certified health education specialist) and CPH (certified in public health).
My brain often processes information in charts, colors, and diagrams, so I created a simple public health infographic below that shows the core of public health and what it entails. Keep in mind that many of these topics overlap. I counted, and my current research encompasses 10 of these categories at once. There are also many other subcategories that could be included, but this is a start. I am sure I will keep editing, but the goal is to obtain an understanding of what the field is (and isn’t).
Please don’t hesitate to submit a question to my website if you want to learn more about public health or have other questions. If you are one of my students, or are a student in another major wanting to learn more, please email me for office hours. I love talking about public health and helping others find their path! Our world needs more public health professionals and needs to shift to focus on preventing disease before it happens. We all deserve the chance to live a healthy life regardless of where we were born.