Public Health Officer

Career Area: Health Care including Nursing

Occupation Group: Health Education and Counseling

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical Public Health Officer earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $54,300

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $82,259

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Works to promote public health and disease prevention and provide information about public health issues. Works for a public health program and provide services, or coordinates and delivers public information about public health issues and crises such as outbreaks of disease.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every Public Health Officer is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
• Research: Experience performing creative and systematic work to understand a product, market, or customer, either before building a new solution, or to troubleshoot an existing issue
• Writing: Experience expressing business messages effectively in written form. This may include planning drafting and revising as necessary.
• Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Public Health and Safety: Working experience of Public Health and Safety. Public health is defined as the science of protecting the safety and improving the health of communities through education, policy making and research for disease and injury prevention.
• Epidemiology: Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in defined populations.
• Infectious Disease: Infectious disease, also known as infectious diseases, infectious medicine, infectious disease medicine or infectiology, is a medical specialty dealing with the diagnosis, control and treatment of infections.
• Disease Control: The success of control programs, particularly those in which the disease has been eradicated, has been based on the epidemiologic principle of interrupting the cycle of infection at its weakest link.
• Personnel Management: Human Resource Management [HRM or HR] is the management of human resources.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Public Health Officer that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Malaria Diagnosis / Treatment: Working knowledge of Malaria Diagnosis / Treatment. Early and accurate diagnosis of malaria is essential for both rapid and effective disease management and surveillance. High-quality malaria diagnosis is important in all settings as misdiagnosis can result in significant morbidity and mortality.
• Tropical Medicine: Tropical medicine (not to be confused with international medicine) is the branch of medicine that deals with health problems that occur uniquely, are more widespread, or prove more difficult to control in tropical and subtropical regions.
• Health Programs:
• Epidemic: An epidemic is the rapid spread of infectious disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time, usually two weeks or less.

Salary Boosting Skills

A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills:

• Tropical Medicine: Tropical medicine (not to be confused with international medicine) is the branch of medicine that deals with health problems that occur uniquely, are more widespread, or prove more difficult to control in tropical and subtropical regions.
• Chronic Disease: Working experience with treatment of Chronic Disease. A chronic condition is a human health condition or disease that is persistent or otherwise long-lasting in its effects or a disease that comes with time
• Veterinary Medicine: Veterinary medicine is the branch of medicine that deals with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease, disorder and injury in non-human animals.
• Disease Prevention: Disease prevention is the deferral or elimination of specific illnesses and conditions by one or more interventions of proven efficacy.
• Disease Surveillance: Disease surveillance is an epidemiological practice by which the spread of disease is monitored in order to establish patterns of progression.

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Public Health Advisor
• Public Health Officer
• Supervisory Veterinary Medical Officer/Public Health Veterinarian Svmo/Sphv
• Deputy Public Health Officer
• Supervisory Veterinary Medical Officer/Public Health Veterinarian Svmo/Sphv 5N

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