Career Paths

Improve the health of communities—for a living.

Community health is a dynamic field with a variety of career opportunities. Our students typically go on to pursue careers in academia, research and practice in both public and private sectors. Beyond graduation, you'll work alongside a diverse mix of stakeholders to improve the health of populations by challenging the social determinants of health, preventing chronic disease and ensuring equitable access to health care.

So whether you want to track the causes of major diseases as an epidemiologist, study the outcomes of health services as a public health researcher or inspire others as an educator, there's a career path that aligns with the impact you wish to make.

What is community health?

The term “community health” can sometimes be hard to define because of its broad implications, impact and scope. On one hand, it involves supporting patients in primary care settings and local communities, working to improve access to and efficiency of public health systems. On the other, it can involve studying large-scale populations and pursuing advocacy to remove barriers to equitable health.

Community health is most-often defined as the science of improving the health of communities and populations through education, policy and research for disease and injury prevention. It involves many disciplines, such as medicine, public policy and data science.

Career Paths and Employers

There are a varied number of career paths available to community health graduates. These include the more familiar roles of epidemiologists who help prevent the spread of diseases, to more unique roles such as data scientists who work to identify critical health trends or health policy leaders who focus on empowering communities to address health issues (particularly the underserved and marginalized).