next »

[jocknerd]

Hi, all. I've lurked the fora for years, but never posted anything. However, I'm nearing the end of grad school and I'm looking at transitioning away from my field of training. I was hoping anyone on the site might be able to give me a little guidance, as I have few in-person mentors for this kind of thing.

Background: I'm going to finish my PhD in counseling psychology in about a year. I've got a good number of publications (15, most first-authored). The pubs are mostly in research instrument development and behavioral health (drug use and HIV testing; including intersections with minority status) as well as some pubs in professional training issues (my elevator speech is that I research intersections of gender, sexuality, and health behaviors). Most of my work involves use of respectably complex stats. I have 70k in external research funding.

I don't want a faculty job in clinical or counseling psych. I won't go into the fine points, but suffice to say I'd like to transition to a field like public health, or at least health psychology. My aim in transitioning is to be able to focus more on my research on behavioral health.

Does this seem like something potentially possible? I'm not really aiming for Johns Hopkins here, but a nicely ranked public health department or something like that would be great. I know only one person in PH, who said I'd have a decent shot, but if anyone else has feedback or suggestions on what PH/similar programs look for in applicants, that would be awesome.

Thank you.

[menotti]

I think it's quite possible, especially if you've got publications and research funding. A school of public health is quite possible.  Look  for departments of "Community and behavioral health" or "health behavior and health education" or "social sciences and health".  You'll find a lot of people with various social science-y PhDs, not necessarily public health ones.

If you really wanted to punch up your credentials, you could look into getting a public health certificate or a health education certificate - that would just give you some reassurance that you understand the public health underpinnings, which might be especially important for teaching.

[madhatter]

I'd agree with menotti. It might not strictly be in public health, though -- depending on the institution, you can find programs that make use of social science statistics and methods in allied health schools, health professions education, medical schools, and probably others. Medical schools also have "offices of education" that sometimes include functions like program review, psychometrics, or simulation assessment that you might find interesting.

[shrek]

what about applying for a postdoc in one of those areas?

[jocknerd]

Thanks so much for your replies! That really is very helpful. Madhatter--that is JUST the kind of thing I was thinking of as a fun job, as I'm very interested in training issues (and have published on the topic). It's very useful to know that exists; it wasn't on my radar until you mentioned it.

shrek: Yes, I will be looking at post docs as well. The certificate in PH isn't really a possibility for logistic reasons (I'm international, it's complicated/expensive to do it now in my grad program, etc.). I would be really happy to be able to skip the post-doc but I'm going to apply to both faculty and post-docs.

Thanks!!!