A health commissioner in the field of public health is one public health career path ideal for individuals who have a passion for leadership. The field of public health offers many different careers for individuals with a variety of different personal skills, and these careers have proven to be able to withstand even the most difficult economic situations.
Becoming a health commissioner in a public health setting will lead to a well-paying and satisfying career which creates a direct impact on the public health of a population. These types of public health professionals can choose from a variety of private, public, and academic public health settings all over the globe in which to work, and they can enjoy a stable career filled with financial and personal reward.
What Is A Health Commissioner?
A health commissioner in a public health setting will be in charge of running and supervising all different departments within a public health group. These types of professionals will normally spend their time developing and implementing new public health procedures while investigating quality control measures to ensure a public health department is running smoothly and without error.
A health commissioner within the public health sector will typically be found doing any of the following jobs:
- Practicing leadership skills with a public health team
- Creating missions or goals for a public health team to strive for or reach on a daily or a long term basis
- Performing negotiations between legislators, policy makers, supporters, and other agencies as well as public health professionals.
- Implementing interdisciplinary strategies between different public health departments or employees such as those in environmental health science and those in public health communications.
- Creating team building exercises with certain public health departments or a group of different public health professionals
- Keeping up to date on all political developments and how they relate to public health, as well as advocating for legislation that will assist the public health of a population
A public health commissioner is a very important public health job, and it is the role of the commissioner to oversee all public health practices and make sure that operations are going smoothly. These types of high ranking public health professionals will typically be natural leaders, talented communicators, and creative thinkers with the ability to solve a myriad of different problems independently while considering outside of the box ideas.
Education And Training
Public health commissioners will typically hold high degrees at the PhD or MD doctorate level, and many are former physicians. In order to begin an educational path to become a health commissioner, one will first begin with a bachelor’s degree program focusing on either pre-medicine related courses or public health. For the physician’s track to the career, these courses will help a person to prepare for the 4 years of medical school to come, and for the non-physician track, the undergraduate classes studied will help a student to prepare for a master’s degree program in public health or a related field.
Next a student will go on to either a master’s degree program or a school of medicine to earn a doctorate. For those choosing the master’s route, a PhD program will then need to be completed after the completion of a master’s program, in order to allow a person to earn a degree at the doctorate level, however both types of professionals will need to earn a great deal of field experience before being able to efficiently work as a health commissioner.
Once a person has graduated from their desired school, they will then begin the journey of gaining experience working as a physician or a member of a public health team. Due to the high position of a health commissioner, these types of public health professionals will often need a great deal of experience to be able to effectively handle all they may see while leading a public health team.
The average yearly salary of a health commissioner is around $62,000, however this figure may vary depending on experience and desired work setting. The need for experienced and qualified health commissioners is expected to rise by around 23%, or 73,000 jobs, by the year 2022, creating an ideal hiring environment for budding professionals.
