Interventions for growth

Career development pathways in Public Health Part III

Over the last 2 weeks, I have been writing a miniseries about career development pathways within public health (or the lack thereof). This week, I conclude the miniseries by making some suggestions for actionable interventions to support professional growth in our sector. I welcome constructive suggestions from readers for interventions, especially through our new subscriber chat.

(Links to Part I and Part II here.)

Photo courtesy of Secta.AI: As I move out of the forest, looks like I have found a ladder. A metaphor for career development, perhaps? If you are also interested in generating some rather imaginative headshots from selfies, please try out my referral link here.

Foundation: mentorship 

I conclude this miniseries with a simple observation: in order to sustainably build a skilled workforce equipped to prepare for and respond to future challenges, we urgently need to address the lack of career development mechanisms in public health.

There are many ways in which to create a learning culture and traditions that would favor workforce retention and the development of career paths. Foundationally, let’s create a brand new culture of mentorship throughout our profession at all stages. 

In more than 20 years of building a career in public health and searching fruitlessly for job security and someone to take me under their wing, I’ve never found a mentor. Meanwhile, I’ve become a strong supporter and advocate for my students and other early career professionals and I try to mentor them. I am currently overwhelmed by requests from early career public health professionals who approach me on LinkedIn to ask for my mentorship: if I didn’t set clear boundaries on my time, I could honestly spend all my day responding to these questions, which would be to the detriment of my business, my family, and my mental health. I’m still trying to find ways to offer guidance in a scalable manner - sharing my insights through this column is one of my responses to the challenge. I know that some of my colleagues charge for mentoring services and I respect them for their ability to monetize their skills, but I just don’t have it in me (yet?) to add to the inequities of our field by transferring the burden for payment onto people whose position is even more vulnerable and precarious than my own. 

As a sector, we need to cultivate mentoring relationships in order to grow the next generation of public health professionals. Let's work together to create an environment where mentorship is the norm, and where experienced professionals are committed to passing on their knowledge and expertise. We need to build mentorship relationships and networks throughout our workplaces and beyond, connecting mentors and mentees both vertically (across varying degrees of seniority) and horizontally (across thematic silos and methodological interests). We need to build mentorship and growth mechanisms and expectations into job descriptions both for mentors (paid time set aside for mentoring) and for mentees (recruit for growth potential, not just current skills). 

Mentorship as culture 

I’m not talking about a one-off mentorship program creating finite time-limited one-on-one relationships. I’m talking about changing the culture and embedding mentorship and growth throughout our professional practices. Raising our successors should be wholly expected at all levels, recognised as part of our job description, and amply rewarded and respected. Without a cultural context of mentorship and growth throughout the public health workforce, we are robbing the future. 

I’d like to work on scaling up expectations for mentoring and institutionalizing expectations for mentorship, so that all public health employers own the responsibility for growing and developing their workforce. Building this new culture will not be easy: few of us have any examples of good mentoring behavior to emulate. I’m going to need it spelled out to me how exactly to support my junior colleagues to flourish, in order to become the senior career guide that I too needed when I was at their stage. In the interests of equity, we’re all going to need protected (read: paid) time in which to prioritize mentoring, so that it does not become the domain of privileged groups only. Since mentoring relationships are new and largely untested in our field, it will behoove us to formalize expectations for frequency of meetings, agendas, scope of relationships, etc. Simultaneously, perhaps we should also be exploring the possibilities of an apprenticeship model: developing a model for education and training that truly reflects the changes in our sector.

Recently, I’ve heard directly from hiring managers recruiting for public health positions that the pressures of time and budget require them to recruit exclusively for the skills that candidates can offer Right Now without additional training, and to deliberately overlook candidates’ aspirations for growth into the next stages of a public health career. This forced shortsightedness is not going to serve any of us well. Without active attention to developing the growth and relationships inherent in preparing and equipping the next generation of public health leaders, we undermine current efforts and rob public health of a future. I’ve got many ideas for developing this as an intervention - please contact me if you are interested in working together. 

Ideas for interventions

In addition to building a foundational culture of mentorship, I offer the following as suggestions for potential areas of intervention:

• For early career professionals, we must pay genuine attention and respect (not lip service) to the needs of our colleagues at the earliest stages of their careers. Create and integrate paid internship opportunities. Connect with students and faculty at local schools of public health to develop pipeline initiatives. Ensure that positions advertised as entry-level truly have no prerequisites. Explore an apprenticeship model.

• For public health professionals developing through all career stages, we must find ways to create active training paths with options to personalize according to individual strengths. Introduce technical skills training that goes beyond the bare minimum for what is needed in the current job to prepare for and envision next steps. Create opportunities to express interests and develop skills across silos. Offer opportunities to attend meetings and conferences to share findings and learn from peers and experts. Find ways to recognise and reward new credentials and achievements. Include supportive and attentive supervision and opportunities for growth into job descriptions at all levels. Make sure that all employees have regular supervisory meetings that go beyond current activities to explore career goals. Promote benchmarks and transparency for salaries.

• For mid-senior level public health professionals, we must emphasize training and support for management, supervision, and leadership - skills that our field has traditionally assumed and not taught. Ongoing training must also address scientific and political communications, with a view to addressing needs for advocacy and lobbying on behalf of public health. Make sure that regular evaluation/appraisal processes include 360-degree perspectives with direct reports (with institutions prepared to accept and address feedback).

I could go on and on. I’m full of ideas and so are my colleagues. I bet you and your colleagues are too.  It’s hard not to over-emphasise how we’re starting from scratch here. 

We need to figure out how to use the milestone experiences of public health professionals to create pathways forward to the next secure and achievable steps. We need to generate meaningful rewards and recognition for volunteer service, short-term contracts, and adjunct teaching jobs - the undervalued work that many of us have been forced into - because these experiences enrich the workforce too. We need standards by which to recognise each other’s accomplishments, even when we are not working in precisely the exact same silo. We need clear paths for development and growth within public health. 

Join me to continue the conversation in Notes or Chat or Comments or Threads.

• What have been your experiences of mentorship in public health? 

• What kinds of mechanisms do you think would help you to make progress in your public health career?

• What do you need in order to grow and develop your skills?

• What would it take for you to feel supported and even cherished?