What is a Public Health Manager?

To qualify as a public health manager, you must have sufficient experience and the appropriate qualifications. You have the option to work in three variants of public health which are: health improvement, health protection, and healthcare.

These subsections of public health are diverse, but, they all strive to put the health of the public at their best interest. All roles involve cooperation with other healthcare providers, aiming to lead successfully, and implement public health programs.

To give an example of how diverse public health roles can be, some focus on managing and supporting teams, providing expertise and advice to organisations, commissioning services, or managing public health expenditures.

If you choose to become a public health manager in England, you’ll most likely be employed by the local government. However, you could find yourself being employed by the NHS, the UK Health Security Agency or a voluntary sector.

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What type of job roles do public health managers have?

Job titles may vary across organisations as well as the pay and conditions.
- Health protection specialist
- Health improvement principal
- Commissioning manager
- Public health principal

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Health protection specialist

Health protection specialists job roles involves creating effective strategies for safeguarding the health of the local population. Typical examples of this type of work could be protecting heath from the weather, floods, or even a pandemic.

As a health protection specialist, you will work alongside other organisations bridging your support. You will demonstrate the most effective response based on life-threatening emergencies. This is known as an emergency planning exercise.

Moreover, you will share specialist advice on infection prevention and control, as well as showing support on how to implement this. Most likely, you will be showing colleagues, patients, members of the public, and organisations.

Examples of advice you could be giving could be: wearing personal protective equipment, dealing with chemical spills and spills of bodily fluids, good hygiene practice, cleanliness within the healthcare or work environment and safe disposal of waste such as needles and sharps.

This role involves assisting the development of evidence-based quality standards for infection prevention and control. This is vital to limit the risk of an outbreak, especially for infections such as MRSA, Norovirus, and Salmonella.

Also, you will help prepare reports about the quality and performance of local systems for protecting health. This could be the numbers and types of people who have taken up immunisation and screening programmes in a given area.

Qualifications Required:
To become a health protection specialist, you’ll need to gain the following:
- Master’s degree in public health or equivalent
- Significant public health experience
- If you’re a registered nurse, you’ll need to have relevant qualifications in infection, infectious disease control, emergency planning, teaching and assessing.

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Health improvement principal

Working as a health improvement principal involves consistent work over a matter of months or years until outcomes are detected; this is because your job is continually evolving with new laws.

Part of this is due to distributing your specialist knowledge and skills to a wide variety of public health areas, successfully leading and planning health improvement services and initiatives.

Depending on your job duties, you could find yourself performing various roles. While doing so, you will be working with many individuals, organisations, and communities.

You could be assisting with reducing local obesity levels by hosting events, raising awareness, and helping people gain affordable access to healthy foods.

On another note, you could be constructing plans and implementing those to increase access to high demand in mental health services. You could also be playing your part in the decreasing stigma surrounding mental health.

The role could involve leading commissioning services and initiatives which aim to reduce dangerous drinking.

Skills Required:
- Delivering complex information in a way that it’s easy to understand.
- Excellent information analysis skills
- Efficiently manage budgets
- Teamwork deciding how to allocate limited resources effectively
- Effectively evaluating services and interventions

Qualifications Required:
- Master’s qualification in Public Health or equivalent, and preferably a management qualification. Ideally, they will be working towards registration with the UK Public Health Register (UKPHR) at an appropriate level.

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Commissioning manager

As a commissioning manager you must be highly competent in understanding policy, identifying and promoting best practice, and developing services. The day to day duties involve sourcing and hiring the right health and social care provider, who care for a specific group within the UK population.

Your expertise must ensure, the providers you’ve chosen can bring positive change to public health. This could be a particular geographical area, such as providing services to help those with mental needs. Such services could be drop-in clinics, counselling support, and job applications.

Working as a commissioning manager means you’ll be taking part in varied tasks. Depending on your organization, you could be deciding on yearly plans on the best way to purchase services.

Your job could involve effective negotiations of robust contracts and services. Likewise, the correct management and delivery of services.

Successfully managing budgets and allocation of the resource by working with the Clinical Commissioning Groups (GCG’s)and local authorities.

Qualifications and Experience Required:
- Degree-level or equivalent
- May have other qualifications in nursing or social work
- Significant experience as a manager or commissioner in the area of health concerned

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Public health principal

A public health principle works in various aspects of public health. They also provide specialist knowledge, leadership, strategic direction, policy advice, and support.

This role involves creating long-term strategic plans for areas of public health. It could include developing a substance and alcohol misuse strategy for a local area, which could take the pressure off GP services and hospital admissions.

You could be assisting in reducing health inequalities by purchasing services for specific groups. Such disparities could be access to diet, fitness, and exercise services specifically for people from poorer or socio-economic backgrounds that people from wealthier backgrounds.

Likewise, you could be developing care pathways coordinating the care of people with specific conditions within a given time frame.

Qualifications Required:
A Master’s degree in Public Health or equivalent, and preferably a management qualification. Ideally, they will also be working towards registration with the United Kingdom Public Health Register (UKPHR) as a specialist.