Episode: 752

Episode Title: Health Careers are Growing, But is it Enough?

Careers in public healthcare are becoming increasingly popular—and not a moment too soon. Let’s talk about it, next on The Perna Syndicate.

Ep 752 show:

Welcome back to The Perna Syndicate! Picking up from yesterday, let’s continue the conversation about the expanding need for healthcare professionals today. 

Over the past few decades, there has been a major uptick in the number of students pursuing public health degrees. According to new research from the University of Minnesota and Johns Hopkins University, the number of public health majors has skyrocketed by more than eleven thousand percent since 2001.

So this is the good news. Here’s the bad news: it’s still not enough to meet the demand we’re seeing for public healthcare workers, both now and into the future. 

Even with the rising interest in these careers, the public health workforce is severely understaffed across the country. We simply need more people. A recent study found that state and local health departments need to hire 80,000 more people in order to adequately provide just the core public health services. This is a huge need to be filled—and an important one.

To reach those kinds of goals, we have to rethink how we inspire young people to pursue their career dreams. Many young people are all-in on helping their community, but just don’t know about the opportunities out there. If we can’t bridge this skills gap, fields like this will continue to struggle and the outcome won’t be pretty.

Tomorrow: What training options, besides a 4-year degree, can help young people get their start in the healthcare field? See you next time on The Perna Syndicate!