What can you do with a Public Health degree?

Solutions consultant – Andrea Wong

Andrea's role as a Solutions Consultant at NexJ Health involves working with various organizations that provide a wide range of health services around the world.

This requires viewing an organization's current processes with a public health lens to understand how digitizing their process with virtual care could improve the quality and efficiency of health services for their targeted population.

Andrea encourages future and current students to seek international experiences and opportunities.

Residential worker, vaccine clinic lead – Natalie Beedle

Natalie’s Public Health degree sparked her passion for health systems, health policy, and social determinants of health.

At the Canadian Mental Health Association, she collaborates with a multidisciplinary team to provide services, create health promotion initiatives, and analyze policies for individuals with alcohol use disorder and substance use disorder, utilizing a harm-reduction scope for marginalized populations.

She also works at Public Health Sudbury and Districts, where her passion for public education drives her work as Vaccine Clinic Lead. Natalie plans to pursue a Master of Public Health.

Health promoter – Jessica Delaney

As a Health Promoter at the Brant County Health Unit working in the Population Health Assessment Department, Jessica works with interdisciplinary teams to address public health issues such as substance misuse, mental health, and youth engagement.

Jessica uses a population health promotion approach to guide public health programming which includes researching, planning, developing, implementation and evaluating programs for different priority populations.

Family support liaison – Kendra Connolly

While finishing up her final semester in Waterloo's Public Health program, Kendra secured a job with Mountain Plains Community Social Services of the North (MPCSSN) in their Solstice Integrated Wellness Centre.

As a Family Support Liaison, Kendra works with youth to help stabilize them as they come off drugs/alcohol addiction or if they’re struggling with mental health. She’s found that so much of what she learned in the public health program applies to her current role.

Program coordinator – Ashfiya Pirani

After taking a health informatics course and completing a co-op work term with the digital health branch at the Ontario Ministry of Health, Ashfiya knew she wanted to learn more about the growing digital health field.

The skills and experiences she developed through co-op and volunteer opportunities positioned her well to land a job with the Canada Health Infoway ACCESS Health program, where she provides program coordination support to enable citizens to connect to digital health services and access their personal health information online.

Master of child study and education candidate – Jennifer MacKinnon

After learning about the developmental aspects of health and how crucial early intervention is, Jennifer became passionate about working with children.

She had a co-op placement with the Toronto District School Board in outdoor education and that led her to eventually pursue a Master of Child Study and Education at the University of Toronto.

Jennifer focuses on children's mental health and wellbeing in the classroom, as well as encouraging them to enjoy healthy activities such as physical activity, being outside, and eating nutritional food.

Master of social work candidate – Kendra Melanson

Kendra was always interested in the social determinants of health and how to provide health care to marginalized populations.

At Waterloo, her experiences ranged from working in a hospital in Uganda to developing policy for a clinic in Ontario. She had the opportunity to witness health care from a variety of perspectives and has seen gaps in service delivery.

These experiences led her to pursue a career advocating with people and working toward social change.