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. 2020 Sep/Oct;135(5):650-657.
doi: 10.1177/0033354920943519. Epub 2020 Aug 5.

Master's-Level Education in the Governmental Public Health Workforce

Jonathon P Leider  1   2 , Katie Sellers  3 , Kyle Bogaert  4 , Brian C Castrucci  3 , Paul C Erwin  5
Affiliations

Master's-Level Education in the Governmental Public Health Workforce

Jonathon P Leider et al. Public Health Rep. 2020 Sep/Oct.

Abstract

Objectives: More than 16 000 graduate degrees in public health are awarded annually. Yet only 14% of the governmental public health workforce has formal public health training of any kind, and 8% has a master of public health (MPH) degree. We characterized the differences among governmental staff members with master's degrees across US health departments.

Methods: We used data from the 2017 Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey, a national survey of state and local public health departments (43 669 responses; response rate, 48%). We examined the characteristics of the workforce by educational attainment and compared respondents who had obtained a "terminal" (ie, highest degree obtained) MPH degree with respondents who had obtained a terminal non-public health (non-PH) master's degree.

Results: Respondents who had a non-PH master's degree were as likely as respondents who had an MPH degree to hold a supervisory role (43% vs 41%; P = .67). We found only 1 significant difference between the 2 groups: respondents aged ≤40 with a terminal MPH degree were significantly less likely than respondents aged ≤40 with a non-PH master's degree to earn more than the national average salary (adjusted odds ratio = 0.67; 95% CI, 0.47-0.97; P = .03).

Conclusions: We found only marginal differences in career outcomes for people working in governmental public health who had a terminal MPH degree vs a terminal non-PH master's degree. This finding does not necessitate a full reconsideration of the MPH as it relates to governmental public health practice but a greater recognition that there are multiple paths into practice.

Keywords: public health education; public health systems; public health workforce.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

    1. Council on Education for Public Health List of accredited schools and programs. Published 2019. Accessed September 4, 2019 https://ceph.org/about/org-info/who-we-accredit/accredited
    1. Leider JP., Plepys CM., Castrucci BC., Burke EM., Blakely CH. Trends in the conferral of graduate public health degrees: a triangulated approach. Public Health Rep. 2018;133(6):729-737.10.1177/0033354918791542 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Erwin PC., Beck AJ., Yeager VA., Leider JP. Public health undergraduates in the workforce: a trickle, soon a wave? Am J Public Health. 2019;109(5):685-687.10.2105/AJPH.2019.305004 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. National Center for Education Statistics Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data center. Published 2015. Accessed August 1, 2015 https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter
    1. Leider JP., Harper E., Bharthapudi K., Castrucci BC. Educational attainment of the public health workforce and its implications for workforce development. J Public Health Manag Pract. 2015;21(suppl 6):S56-S68.10.1097/PHH.0000000000000306 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

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