Author: Sara Habibipour
April 22 marks the 54th Earth Day, a day intended to remind us of our responsibility as global citizens to protect our environment.
The word “environment” may lead you to think about mountains, oceans, trees, etc. However, the environment is anything and everything that currently surrounds us. Our environment, including its pollution, pathogens, and pesticides, affects not only our individual health, but the health of our communities.
Climate change has been labeled as the single biggest threat to global public health by the World Health Organization. Weather events are more extreme, natural disasters are more frequently occurring, and the presence of zoonotic pathogens has only continued to rise. For example, climate change has contributed to the spread of diseases like Dengue and West Nile in locations where they haven’t been historically seen before, such as the United States (read our article on this subject here). And, analyzing the social determinants of health, we know that not everyone is at equal risk; the effects of climate change on health disproportionately affect low-income, minority communities as well as children, the elderly, and the immunocompromised.
This is why the field of environmental public health focuses on protecting communities from everyday threats to their health and safety that result from the elements present in their environment.
If this sounds interesting to you, then perhaps you should look into environmental public health as a career option.
The course requirements for these degrees will often be quite similar to those for other life-science and healthcare professions (biology, chemistry, etc.). It’s common for environmental public health specialists to get a bachelor's degree in epidemiology, environmental health, biostatistics, public health, sociology, etc. However, a bachelor’s degree can be earned in just about anything. Masters programs, on the other hand, are more geared towards environmental public health specifically and will very likely require you to do some form of laboratory or field research.
Master's degrees available in this area include:
MS in Environmental Sciences
MS in Health Science in Environmental Health
MPH (Master of Public Health) with Environmental emphasis
MS in Health Informatics
It’s important to note that environmental public health is a very wide field that calls for a lot of people with different expertise; for example, epidemiologists, environmental engineers, groundwater protection specialists, and environmental toxicologists are all considered environmental public health specialists. If your interest lies particularly within zoonotic diseases, for example, you could pursue higher education in epidemiology and make your contributions in environmental public health by studying the spillover of diseases between humans and animals due to changes in climate and environment. If you prefer engineering, let's say, then you can gear your career towards developing sewage and waste systems that minimize water-source contaminations in rural communities. These are just a couple of an infinite number of possibilities.
Doctorate degrees in the field tend to be useful for people pursuing a career in academia or to conduct industry research at private companies such as those of drug manufacturers.
Hope you learned something new this Earth Day! Perhaps you’ll become an environmental public health specialist and make changes on the issues that Earth Day highlights.