The American Public Health Association, founded in 1972, exists to both inform and protect the public. They are the oldest and most diverse organization of public health professionals. As you likely know, they play an important role in communication, disease prevention and crisis control, when there are serious health issues that threaten our nation.

With a goal of true education and prevention, The APHA also publishes books, papers and articles on disease control and preventative measures, including the peer-reviewed “American Journal of Public Health” and the award-winning newspaper, “The Nation’s Health”. 

Some of the projects that APHA accomplishes include protecting funding for public health services, providing vaccines for school-aged children, regulating prescription drugs for safety and effectiveness, ensuring access to clean water and air, measuring of air quality, providing educational campaigns to reduce childhood obesity and developing school nutritional programs.

APHA understands that:

• A healthy public gets sick less frequently and spends less money on health care, which equals better economic productivity and improved quality of life.
• Healthy children become healthy adults. Healthy children also attend school more often and are better performers.
• Public health educates people about lifestyle choices and also reduced the impact of disasters with preparation.
• APHA is a central point of communication and education when disasters do occur.

 APHA hires a variety of people to fulfill public health duties. These include:

• Emergency Responders
• Health Educators
• Scientists and Researchers
• Public Heath Physicians
• Public Health Nurses
• Occupational Health & Safety Professionals
• Social Workers
• Nutritionists
• Epidemiologists
• Public Policymakers
• Community Planners
• Restaurant Inspectors

 For more information, visit APHA. Career Openings are here. You can also follow them on Twitter and Like them on Facebook.

As you’re all aware by now, job hunting today is a much more complex endeavor than ever before. Let’s review what we’ve learned about job hunting over the past several months. Here are some of the things you need to be doing to be competitive in today’s job marketplace:

1. Join both real world and virtual groups for networking and support.

2. Enlist the help of a mentor or career counselor.

3. Stay on top of current and emerging trends by reading industry-specific magazines and blogs regularly.

4. Attend classes and workshops whenever possible.

5. Keep your resume up-to-date.

6. Be intentional about improving your personal character.

And finally, Google yourself to see what comes up! That’s right. I “googled” myself several years ago and was only listed 3 times in very obscure articles and websites. Totally harmless. Now my name is all over the place and some of the information is outdated and incorrect. Fortunately, there is nothing embarrassing or incriminating. More and more companies are requiring their HR people to research job candidates online, and though it may seem a violation of our privacy and our rights, the things they’re finding could affect your ability to get or keep a job.

Remember:

• If you are on social sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, make sure your profile pictures and biographical information are correct and current. If you have questionable photos, posts or friends, remove them. If your pages contain things you wouldn’t want your kids or your mom to see, you definitely don’t want it there for employers to see!
• Ask current or former co-workers and supervisors to provide recommendations on LinkedIn.
• If you find your online reputation to be seriously troubling you may want to enroll the help of a reputation management company like ReputationDefender.

Still think all of this stuff is just a passing fad that will go away with time and have no real impact on the way we do business/ Consider this: The Library of Congress will be acquiring and permanently storing the entire archive of public Twitter posts since 2006. It’s not going away!

The job-related headlines have provided an ongoing emotional roller coaster the past few years swinging wildly from pessimistic news of doom and gloom to optimistic reports of economic recovery. This week I read about something positive and real that encouraged me – a system in healthcare technology that is creating new jobs and will continue to do so in the coming years. These are Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), also referred to as Health Information Technology (HIT) (and a bevy of other monikers with accompanying acronyms).

HIEs have been around, on a small scale, for at least a decade, allowing the exchange of medical records between formerly unconnected electronic systems. The systems will decrease administrative costs for providers while improving the quality of healthcare for patients.

While there are some networks in various States, there are currently no state or federal regulations governing the exchange of medical records. However, there are several organizations working towards a nationwide, regulated network.

This will create more jobs as the system matures. On the bureaucratic level, there will be people in state and federal government responsible for creating and monitoring these networks. There will be the techies creating the software (there’s already several companies out there, but as we know with technology, there’s always room for competition and room for improvement). There will be the sales force and the tech support staff installing, training and helping providers maintain the systems. And finally, there will be the end users themselves, possibly an entire job in itself once these systems become fully integrated into the healthcare system.

How can you jump on this burgeoning bandwagon? Should you hop on board? Whether you’re looking for work or already employed the answer is YES. This is a system that you should definitely keep your eye on as it continues to grow and change, whether you’re in management, tech support, patient services or even employed as a nurse or physician.

Here are a few of the ways that you could use your healthcare experience to assist the transition to HIE’s:

1. Serve on a regulatory committee providing your healthcare expertise.
2. Become a point person who provides test runs of one of the new systems that eventually gets installed in your hospital.
3. Combine your healthcare experience with your love of technology to write software or consult for an HIE.
4. Take classes in software development if this field interests you.

Follow the HIE news at the Nationwide Health Information Network Watch.