While I have many years of public health experience at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Georgetown University, my time working as a public administrative analyst at UCLA led me to become a public health data scientist. This role required me to work in regulatory compliance and data management for cancer clinical trials. While I delved into the cancer epidemiology literature at this job, I also stumbled into learning about the role machine learning can play in predicting cancer and public health overall. This role is how I found my way to data science.
At this point, I picked up Learn Python the Hard Way. Also, I used various websites like Reddit and Stack Overflow to learn Python. Find a list of resources here.
At some point, I realized I needed to go back to school for public health and learn more statistical analysis tools. It was hard to decide between an MS and MPH in Epidemiology or Biostatistics. Eventually, I decided to do an MS in Epidemiology. While in my MS program, I kept learning Python and took as many epidemiology and biostatistics classes as possible. Eventually, I did an ORISE fellowship in Data Science and Data Visualization at the FDA while in my MS program.
When you are choosing classes, always maximize gaining hard skills like data analysis in R or SAS over topical courses that only conduct literature reviews and write reports without requiring data analysis. When you are working, you can focus on learning topics like cancer epidemiology or health education. You want to take classes that are hard to learn while in school.
Working at the FDA as a fellow while in my master’s program helped me start combining public health and data science. I focused on wrangling adverse event data using Python. I pulled the adverse event data into Tableau to create a dashboard to understand adverse reactions to medications better. I recommend finding internships, research assistantships, and a practicum that allows you to conduct data analysis in SAS, R, or Python. Also, it would be great to start learning SQL while on an internship if your school doesn’t have an SQL class.
Now, I work as a Data Scientist at Accenture Federal Services, where I work on various healthcare projects and use my public health knowledge every day. I primarily attribute getting a Data Scientist position to getting an MS in Epidemiology and completing a certificate in Data Science. I completed two independent study projects using epidemiologic methods while in my MS and a capstone using data science in my certificate program.
Here are some of the classes I took in my summer data science program.
Foundations of Data Analytics and Data Science
Software Engineering for Data
Data Sources & Storage
Data Ingestion & Wrangling
Data Analysis I: Statistics
Data Analysis II: Machine Learning
Visual Analytics
Applied Data Science (capstone project)
Overall, I suggest public health professionals who want to get into data science should learn Python and SQL. Also, I recommend completing a data science project related to their area of public health expertise. For example, if you are a cancer epidemiologist, you can use Tableau to make a visualization of a cancer dataset or perform predictive analytics with a dataset using Python, or R. Data.gov is a good source for datasets to use for a data science project. Also, I recommend learning how to negotiate your salary for those switching from other industries or types of companies.
Thanks for reading! I will be discussing news and resources on public health and data science in the following newsletter articles.
If you have any comments on questions, please comment below.
“Health Data Science Newsletter” is written by Andrea Hobby, MS— an epidemiologist & data scientist. Consider financially supporting this newsletter. You will help me to write regularly about public health & data science. Subscribe to get regular job postings and events in public health & data science. To support the effort, please subscribe and share here:
Hai, I'm planning to do M.Sc. Data Science from UK, I got some offers from Data Science as well as Health Data Science.
But I'm in a dilemma whether to do Data Science and then work with Health data or doing M.Sc Health data Science.
I'm interested to know about the career opportunities in Health Data science.
Kindly please give me guiding for the above.
Thank you.