When the Door Slams Anyway: A tale of frustration from an early-career public health professional who has done all the right things - Voices #21
An early-career public health professional asks what happens when a generation trained for public health finds the doors shut.
We continue our series Voices from the Field: Meeting This Moment in Public Health in which we lift the voices of public health professionals reflecting on the realities we’re facing today - and the lessons learned across the arc of their careers. This week, we share a powerful reflection from an early-career public health professional whose story echoes the experiences of many recent MPH graduates navigating an unstable job market.
If you’d like to follow Annika’s lead and share your own perspective on public health in these times, I’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch!
When the Door Slams Anyway: A tale of frustration from an early-career public health professional who has done all the right things
By Annika K. Peterson, MPH
I have been unemployed for months.
Next week, I am going back to substitute teaching, something I once swore I would never do again. It’s the job that drove me to graduate school in the first place, the one I thought I had finally escaped when I found public health.
When I discovered public health, I thought I had found my home. My strengths made sense here: I could help people in ways that matched both my skillset and my purpose. For the first time, I saw a career that reflected the version of myself I always hoped to become.
And now, through no fault of my own, I have been shut out.
I finished my Master of Public Health in September 2023 and didn’t find work until July 2024. My practicum hadn’t provided enough experience for the jobs that required an MPH, and the entry-level positions either didn’t exist or somehow still required years of experience. How do you get experience if you can’t get a job?
I finally secured a position with AmeriCorps to serve in the Public Health Corps, a federally-funded program designed to train new public health professionals while increasing capacity at local public health departments. It felt like a door was opening at last. The pay was not enough for me to move out of my parents’ house and the contract was only for eleven months. But I told myself that it would be worth it - that this is how every career begins, with sacrifice and perseverance.
And for a while, it was worth it. I was gaining experience, making meaningful connections, and feeling useful again.
Networking has always been a weak spot for me. I am introverted, I can be anxious, I often feel painfully awkward - although I like to think that I can be charismatic and charming at the right moments. Living in a geographically isolated area made the whole “it’s who you know, not what you know” thing feel like a cruel joke. But during my AmeriCorps service, I started to get it. I started to feel as though I was finally finding my place in the web of public health professionals who make the system work.
And then the 2024 election happened, and the new Administration took office in January 2025.
Suddenly, the jobs that I was just starting to qualify for disappeared. Then came the federal funding cuts. My AmeriCorps program chose to sunset rather than risk being eliminated. Job listings shrank, and my inbox filled with news of layoffs and hiring freezes.
I am trying to keep my public health skills intact through volunteer work, but when combined with the drain of a job I truly despise and the strain of applying for jobs (some applications take hours to fill out), I don’t know if I can.
In Minnesota, local public health is mandated by law, but much of its funding is federal. The same is true of the non-profit sector. So now, not only are there fewer job openings, but the few jobs that exist are being flooded with applicants whose years of experience make mine look like a footnote.
I am terrified and angry. I am bitter and exhausted.
I worked hard for this degree - $60,000 of student debt hard - and I am watching it collect dust while I apply for jobs that don’t require it. I’m scared that I’ll be stuck forever in a job that I hate, that my education was a mistake, that I’ll never again be qualified for the work I trained to do.
I worry that by the time the jobs exist again, I may no longer be a competitive candidate. Will AI be doing the jobs that I could do? Will more recent graduates without gaps in experience edge me out? I applied for a job at one of the places that I volunteer and got an interview, but not a second one. That was a legitimately soul-crushing experience. I don’t know what to do anymore—if I am not good enough even when I know people, when will I ever be good enough?
Is the expectation that we should volunteer or work for wages so low we need a second or even third job for 2-5 years before we can get a job that pays all the bills? What is the point of a graduate degree or a year of service that disqualifies us from unemployment benefits if there are no jobs, entry level or otherwise? Why, even before the decimation of our field, were entry-level jobs so hard to find, and why wasn’t my master’s degree good enough for them? What is the point of a master’s degree if it barely qualifies me for an interview for an entry-level job?
Public health is a field that prides itself on understanding systems and their downstream effects. Surely it must be able to recognize the deep harm that this environment does to a person, family, and community over the years and address it. But somehow, it has failed to recognize the damage being done to its own early-career professionals. How can a field dedicated to wellness and prevention expect its future workforce to endure years of instability, poverty wages, and unpaid “experience” without consequence?
I am cognizant of the realities of our time. It is unlikely that federal funding will be restored or that the political landscape will favor public health in the next few years. But I don’t think the problems public health is facing are simply products of these circumstances. I can’t help feeling that the public health sector has failed its new graduates and early career professionals.
And I’m not alone.
My friends from graduate school are all in the same place: underemployed, unemployed, or burned out before their careers even begin. My AmeriCorps peers - some with MPHs - are struggling too. The advice to “just get your foot in the door” with a volunteer position now feels cruel. We did. The door slammed anyway.
Maybe I’m just bitter. Maybe I really am not good enough.
But I don’t believe that.
I’ve met the people who got in before me, and I know that I could do what they do - and bring something new. I know that I’m not alone in that belief either.
I have worked hard to get here. I want to continue working hard. And so do my friends and all the people like us. But many of them, myself included, have lost hope.
We are smart, driven, and full of heart. We just need a chance.
Right now, what I feel most is grief. Not just for myself, but for an entire generation of public health workers who believed in this field enough to train for it—and are now watching it crumble from the outside.
We deserve better.
Public health deserves better.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent the views of any organization, employer, or institution with which they are affiliated.
Annika K. Peterson MPH is an aspiring public health professional who has not given up on her childhood dream of saving the world. She has learned that it will more likely happen through relationships, organizing, policy, and programs rather than a radioactive spider bite.
If you would like to follow Annika’s example by sharing your perspective on public health right now in our series Voices from the Field: Meeting This Moment in Public Health, please get in touch!
Action steps - a note from Katie
Thank you for reading this newsletter for and about the public health workforce. At this tumultuous time, I’m still really not sure where we go from here. But each time that I publish this newsletter and receive positive feedback from readers, my list of ideas for action steps continues to grow. I will start to compile these suggestions here. As we learn more, let’s keep adding to this list:
Do Annika’s words above inspire you? Would you also like to share your perspective on public health right now? Or write a love letter to public health? Got something to say to or about the public health workforce? Got big feelings about the RIFs or the RTO or the EOs or the BS? I would love to publish your words here as a step towards advocacy and support. Get in touch.
🆕☀️Thank a public health hero today! It could be a mentor, a colleague who had your back, or just appreciation for the protections we all rely on, like vaccines, clean water, and safe food. The more voices, the more powerful it becomes. Let’s fill this board with thanks and encouragement for our public health heroes. https://thankyoucdc.kudoboard.com/boards/VcgUPZZL
Let’s communicate what public health is and why it matters that so many of us have been forced to leave our jobs. What is your proudest moment in public health? Complete this form to submit your public health story to be used for advocacy.
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I close by emphasising what I said in a previous newsletter:
“At this time of uncertainty for the public health workforce, let’s remember our commitment to science and evidence and data. We know that validating emotions and baggage has a place too, but we need to be able to identify them and distinguish opinion from fact.
Let’s recommit to kindness and mutual support for the public health workforce and beyond. If leaders are trying to sow divisions among us, the best we can do is to respond with empathy, and by strengthening, connecting, and lifting up one another.
Right now, the best I can offer my fellow public health professionals is a place* to gather and reflect and share and vent and organize and ask questions and offer support to one another. We’re going to need that now more than ever.”
*This is a plug for the Public Health Connections Lounge on LinkedIn, where we seek to build community and conversation among public health professionals. Join us.
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Totally agree, thinking of going back for something clinical. Public Health .. no one respects it.
An issue in all fields is that Everyone thinks Someone Else is hiring the new grads so they don't have to. Others don't know or don't care how competitive some fellowships actually are, i.e., worse than Harvard admissions.
When folks end up in jobs they did or could have done right after high school or undergrad, they need to keep it on their resume, even if it doesn't feel relevant. If it's not there, it'll lead to too much imagination about what you were doing immediately after school.
Unfortunately, I'd anonymize your post immediately so prospective employers don't think you're too complain-y, as factually correct as you are.