Career Paths
Public health practice is highly interprofessional and many public health providers have overlapping competencies. The approach to training the public health workforce, therefore, is based on the skills or competency-base required to carry out public health functions as opposed to being discipline or profession-based. Our MPH Faculty encompasses practicing health professionals, methodologists, including epidemiologists and statisticians, scientists from the social and biological sciences, and health economists.
Students in the program may exercise the career mobility afforded by the MPH to move into more specialized sectors or leadership positions, or transition to a new career.
Potential employers for MPH graduates include provincial ministries of health, agriculture and environment, regional health authorities and public health departments, federal agencies such as the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and Health Canada and Environment Canada. In addition, private sector employers include those in the areas of food and agriculture, the environment, medical technology, and private health care services.
Graduates in these settings may engage in a wide variety of activities including:
- directing data management/bioinformatics systems
- engaging in disease surveillance and outbreak investigation
- planning disease prevention and health promotion activities
- contributing to evidence-based decision-making in health care and health care management
- assessing workplace health and safety, managing environmental health programs
- directing randomized controlled trials and longitudinal cohort studies of health-related interventions
- evaluating the effectiveness of health programs and health promotion activities
