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Public Health Professional

51.22 Public Health · SOC 21-1091

⚠⚠⚠ The job most students picture when they say public health is the smallest one in the federal data. Epidemiologists: 12,300 employed in the whole country, about 800 openings a year, and entry is effectively 100% graduate. The jobs are in health education (71,800, $64,070) and community health work (65,100, $51,850, high-school entry). ⚠⚠ Florida's own numbers say the same thing from the other side — 579 master's degrees against 560 bachelor's, at just 8 institutions, every one a university.

Licensure and accreditation
⚠⚠⚠ THE CREDENTIAL IS COUNTABLE, AND IT IS NOT THE MAJOR. NCHEC's CHES — Certified Health Education Specialist — takes a bachelor's, master's or doctoral degree from an accredited institution, PLUS either a transcript showing a major in health education OR at least 25 SEMESTER CREDITS of coursework, with a grade of C or better, addressing the Nine Areas of Responsibility. ⚠⚠ The distribution is specified: a minimum of 12 credits from process courses, a maximum of 9 from topic-focused courses, and a maximum of 6 from other courses — so you cannot reach it by stacking topic electives. ⚠⚠⚠ That makes this one of the few choice paths where the credential can be planned from the first term with a calculator rather than a hope. Pull the Nine Areas from NCHEC, map them onto your catalogue, and count. ⚠ MCHES is the master's-level version, adding academic preparation at master's level and professional experience. ⚠ Nothing here is licensed by Florida — not health education specialists, not community health workers, not epidemiologists. For graduate study the accreditor that matters is CEPH, the Council on Education for Public Health; verify a programme's status with CEPH itself. ⚠⚠ And note the contrast with health care administration, the neighbouring path: there, Florida STATUTE rewards the MAJOR (s. 468.1695 halves a licensure internship for it). Here the credential rewards the COURSEWORK and ignores the major entirely. Two adjacent health fields, opposite answers to the same question.

⚠⚠⚠ The three jobs, and the famous one is the smallest

RoleSOC2025 medianEmployedOpenings/yrGrowth 2024–34Entry
Health education specialist21-1091$64,07071,8007,900faster than average (5–6%)bachelor's
Community health worker21-1094$51,85065,1007,800✅ much faster (7%+)⚠ high school
⚠⚠ Epidemiologist19-1041$87,220⚠⚠ 12,300⚠⚠⚠ 800✅ much faster (7%+)⚠ 67% master's, 22% post-doc, 11% doctorate

⚠⚠⚠ Read the epidemiologist row carefully before choosing this field for that reason. Twelve thousand three hundred people hold the job in the entire United States, and about eight hundred positions open a year. It pays well, it is growing fast, and there is almost none of it — and every route in requires a graduate degree.

⚠⚠ That is not an argument against public health. It is an argument for knowing which job you are aiming at. Health education and community health work together employ 137,000 people and open about 15,700 positions a year — nearly twenty times the epidemiology figure.

⚠⚠ O*NET and BLS disagree about how you get in, and it is worth knowing

SourceEntry education for health education specialists
BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook✅ bachelor's degree
⚠ O*NET respondent survey⚠ 62% said associate degree, 31% bachelor's

⚠ They do not agree, so this page quotes both. BLS reports the typical entry level; O*NET reports what its respondents said their own job required, and those are different questions. The credential sides with BLS — CHES requires a bachelor's at minimum — so plan on the degree and treat the O*NET figure as evidence that some employers hire below it.

⚠ The two sources also use different projection decades: BLS projects 6% growth and about 6,900 annual openings for 2025–35; O*NET reports 5–6% and 7,900 for 2024–34. Same picture, different vintage.

⚠⚠⚠ Florida says “master's field” twice, in two independent datasets

First, the degrees awarded (IPEDS, general public health, 2023):

LevelCredentials
⚠⚠ Master's⚠⚠ 579
Bachelor's560
Research doctorate44

⚠⚠⚠ The master's outnumbers the bachelor's — which happens in no other programme on this site.

Second, the courses. Of the 18 PHC courses carried by four or more Florida public institutions, 14 are graduate. Only three undergraduate PHC numbers reach four carriers at all.

⚠⚠ So treat the MPH as the normal terminal credential and the bachelor's as the first half, and budget for it from the start rather than discovering it in your final year.

⚠⚠ The undergraduate subject is numbered HSC, not PHC

A student who searches the PHC prefix finds a graduate catalogue and reasonably concludes there is no undergraduate route. There is — it is filed under HSC:

CourseFL institutions
HSC4500 Epidemiology9 — ⚠ five of them STATE COLLEGES
HSC4730 Public Health Research7
HSC3032 Foundations of Public Health5
HSC3661 Communication Theory and Practice for Health5
PHC2100 Introduction to Public Health5

⚠ Search both prefixes, and register by number.

⚠⚠⚠ Access: the opposite of the degree next door

Public healthHealth care administration
FL public institutions⚠ 824
Sector⚠⚠ all universities✅ 20 state colleges carry upper division
Median of the target job$64,070$123,860

⚠⚠ These two subjects overlap considerably at the policy end and are not equally reachable. If staying at a state college matters — and for a working adult it usually does — that is a real constraint and it should be part of the decision, not a discovery.

⚠⚠ The credential is 25 credits, and you can count them now

CHES does not require a health education major. It requires a bachelor's plus 25 semester credits addressing NCHEC's Nine Areas of Responsibility, at C or better, distributed as:

⚠⚠⚠ The ceiling on topic courses is the part that catches people. Nutrition, substance use, sexual health and chronic disease are the interesting courses and they are the capped ones. You must deliberately take the programme-planning and evaluation coursework, and it is the part nobody chooses for fun.

⚠ Do this in your first term: get the Nine Areas from NCHEC, map your catalogue onto them, and count. It is a spreadsheet, and on a path where most advice is vague, it is a number.

Necessary skills

Advice

⚠⚠⚠ Decide early whether you are aiming at epidemiology. If you are, plan the master's or doctorate from the beginning, load up on statistics and quantitative methods, and accept that you are competing for about 800 openings a year nationally. If you are not, say so — and aim at health education or community health, where the jobs are.

⚠⚠ Count your CHES credits from term one. Twenty-five, at least twelve of them process courses, maximum nine topic. It is the single most concrete thing you can do on this path.

⚠ Budget for the MPH. In Florida the master's outnumbers the bachelor's in this field; treat it as the norm and check the programme's CEPH status with CEPH.

⚠ Check availability before you commit. Eight institutions, all universities. If you need a state college, look hard at health care administration or health information management instead — both overlap and both are far more widely taught.

And get into a health department, a federally qualified health centre or a community organisation early, in any capacity. This is a field where a graduate with two years of real community work beats a graduate with a better transcript, and the CHES coursework assumes you have seen a programme run.

Programs that lead here

A program is a field of study, one level above a degree — each page says which degrees it covers and which Florida institutions award them. ⚠ The count is institutions that awarded a credential in the field in 2023; it is not a promise that a school runs this exact degree, and it counts something different from the course-based list further down.

Public Health 14 Florida schools
The named route — 8 Florida public institutions, all universities, 1,208 credentials with ⚠ 579 master's against 560 bachelor's. USF 423, Florida State 279, UF 198, FIU 126. ⚠⚠ Read its degrees note on why the undergraduate teaching is numbered HSC rather than PHC.
Health Care Administration 24 Florida schools
⚠⚠⚠ The comparison to make before committing, because the two overlap at the policy end and are NOT equally reachable: 24 institutions against 8, with 20 state colleges carrying the upper-division coursework against none here. ⚠ And the target occupation pays $123,860 against health education's $64,070.
Health Information Management 31 Florida schools
⚠ Both fields live on health data and students confuse them. HIM owns the individual record; public health aggregates populations. ⚠⚠ HIM's credentials (RHIT, RHIA) are reachable with an associate degree from 31 institutions — a far shorter route to a recognised credential if that is what you want.
Dietetics and Nutrition 6 Florida schools
⚠ A real overlap rather than a neighbour: community nutrition IS public health practice, and WIC and SNAP-Ed are shared employers. ⚠⚠ The difference worth weighing is that the dietitian credential is LICENSED in Florida and health education is not licensed at all.

Related, but not a route in

Programs worth knowing about if you are considering this career — ⚠ they do not lead to it. Each row says what it is and is not.

Nursing 78 Florida schools
⚠ Not a route in, but public health nursing is a substantial destination and it fixes this path's weakest point — a public health bachelor's alone is a thin credential, and a nursing licence underneath an MPH is not. ⚠⚠ Nursing is taught at 78 Florida institutions against public health's 8.

Careers similar to this one

Careers filed under the same broad field in the federal classification (HEALTH PROFESSIONS AND RELATED PROGRAMS) — often they share early coursework, and each row says which group it is filed in. ⚠ Worth reading BEFORE you commit: switching between neighbours is cheap early and expensive late.

Athletic Trainer Allied Health Diagnostic, Intervention, and Treatment Professions
⚠⚠⚠ A master's-entry, state-licensed clinical profession paying $62,520 — less than a licensed practical nurse earns on a certificate ($64,400), and less than every associate-degree clinical route on this site except paramedic. ⚠⚠ The profession moved to master's entry in 2022: CAATE states that after the fall 2022 term, baccalaureate degree programmes will no longer enrol students. ⚠ Florida's statute has not caught up and still reads as though a bachelor's is enough.
Dental Hygienist Dental Support Services and Allied Professions
Dental hygienists are licensed clinicians who assess and treat the gums, remove calculus and stains, take and read radiographs, apply preventive agents, and teach patients to look after their own teeth. ⚠ A median of $98,100 on a two-year associate degree — the highest of any two-year route on this site. ⚠⚠ Florida licenses the work under Chapter 466 and requires THREE separate examinations on top of the degree. ⚠⚠⚠ Admission is the hard part, not the coursework: 18 public programmes in the whole state, all limited-access.
Diagnostic Medical Sonographer Allied Health Diagnostic, Intervention, and Treatment Professions
Sonographers produce and interpret the ultrasound images physicians diagnose from — deciding in real time which views answer the clinical question, and recognising the difference between healthy and pathological tissue on a screen nobody else is watching. ⚠ A median of $96,590 on a two-year degree, second only to dental hygiene among the two-year routes on this site. ⚠⚠⚠ And a regulatory fact worth knowing before you enrol: Florida does NOT license sonographers, because the statute is written about radiation rather than about imaging.
Health Care Administrator Health and Medical Administrative Services
Running the non-clinical half of health care — budgets, staffing, quality, compliance, revenue, regulators. $123,860 median, 616,200 employed, 62,100 openings a year, growing much faster than average. ⚠⚠ There is no required major: Census microdata puts HEALTH first at 169,319 people, BUSINESS second at 75,396 and PSYCHOLOGY third at 47,154. ⚠⚠⚠ But Florida statute puts a price on the choice — on the nursing home side, a health administration major halves the required training programme from 2,000 hours to 1,000.
Health Information Technician, Coder and Medical Office Administrator Health and Medical Administrative Services
⚠⚠⚠ Three different routes wear this name in Florida, they are taught at roughly the same number of institutions, and only ONE of them leads to the field's professional credential. Health information management — 31 institutions, and the associate degree is what makes you RHIT-eligible. Billing and coding — 37 institutions and the largest output, all clock-hour certificates, none of which does. Medical office administration — 36 institutions into an occupation of 850,000 people with no credential ladder at all. ⚠⚠ Choosing wrongly does not waste a term; it forecloses the credential.
Licensed Practical Nurse Practical Nursing, Vocational Nursing and Nursing Assistants
LPNs give direct nursing care under an RN or physician — medications, wounds, vital signs, assessment — and supervise aides. ⚠ It is the widest-taught credential on this site (48 Florida institutions, 1,322 completions a year), a median of $64,400, and the one field where Florida law publishes each programme's licence-examination pass rate before you enrol. Look it up.
Medical Assistant and Pharmacy Technician Allied Health and Medical Assisting Services
Two of the largest short-certificate routes into health care in Florida, paying within $60 a year of each other and taught at the same technical colleges — and the state treats them completely differently. ⚠⚠⚠ Florida writes down in statute exactly what a medical assistant may do, including venipuncture and administering medication, and requires NO licence, certificate or training to do it. It requires a pharmacy technician, working behind a counter, to register with the Board of Pharmacy and complete a board-approved programme. ⚠⚠ And the medical assisting programme has FOUR labelled exit points you can leave on and be hired at — the pharmacy technician programme has none.
Medical Laboratory Scientist Clinical/Medical Laboratory Science/Research and Allied Professions
Medical laboratory scientists produce the results a diagnosis is made from — haematology, clinical chemistry, microbiology, immunology and the blood bank — and catch the result that is wrong before a physician acts on it. ⚠⚠ Florida is one of the few states that LICENSES this work: you may not report a clinical laboratory result here without a licence. ⚠⚠⚠ Read the wage section before you commit: this is a four-year degree paying less than three of the two-year health paths on this site, and that trade-off is the honest centre of this page.
Nurse Practitioner and Advanced Practice Nurse Registered Nursing, Nursing Administration, Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing
⚠⚠⚠ Florida grants nurse practitioners autonomous practice — and almost every account of it omits the limit that matters. Autonomous registration covers PRIMARY CARE ONLY. It does not let you practise your specialty without a physician protocol, and only certified midwives are excepted. 11,201 APRNs were registered for autonomous practice as of the 2024 legislative analysis. ⚠⚠ The occupation itself is nearly twice the size of the physician assistant profession — 320,400 employed, 29,500 openings a year, $132,300 median.
Occupational Therapy Assistant Allied Health and Medical Assisting Services
Occupational therapy assistants deliver the treatment that gets people back to doing ordinary things — dressing, cooking, writing, working, playing — after injury, stroke, developmental delay or mental illness. ⚠ A median of $72,300 on a two-year degree, growing 21%. ⚠⚠⚠ And the finding worth acting on: it pays MORE and grows FASTER than the physical therapist assistant, and Florida trains a QUARTER as many. Four institutions, 57 graduates a year. This page covers the assistant, the aide and the therapist.
Paramedic Allied Health Diagnostic, Intervention, and Treatment Professions
Paramedics are the highest level of prehospital care — assessing and stabilising at the scene, administering drugs, managing advanced airways, reading ECGs and running a cardiac arrest before the patient reaches a hospital. ⚠ Median $60,600, reached through a certificate rather than a degree, and stacked on top of a short EMT course most people complete first. ⚠⚠ In Florida this is substantially a FIRE SERVICE credential: departments pay for it and pay extra for holding it. ⚠⚠⚠ And the accreditation rule here is the strictest on this site — the wrong programme leaves you unable to certify at all.
Pharmacist Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Administration
⚠⚠ One route: the Doctor of Pharmacy, awarded in Florida's public system by UF, FAMU and USF (about 412 a year). ⚠⚠ Admission turns on two or more years of prerequisite science, not a bachelor's degree: UF's minimum is an associate degree, and more than half of Pharm.D. applications nationally come from people without a bachelor's. Median pay is $140,910 nationally and $135,970 in Florida. BLS expects retail demand to be limited as prescriptions move online and by mail.

See every career in HEALTH PROFESSIONS AND RELATED PROGRAMS →

Courses along this path

Selected, not exhaustive — the courses specific to this path plus the foundations it is built on. A course number does not identify a course in Florida: always check your own institution's catalog and take a syllabus to an adviser.

HSC4500 —Epidemiology Guide
⚠⚠ Epidemiology — 9 institutions and the most widely carried undergraduate public health course in Florida. ⚠ Five of the nine are STATE COLLEGES (Eastern Florida, Palm Beach, Santa Fe, State College of Florida, Valencia), which is the only part of this field a state college reliably offers.
⚠ ⚠ Florida also numbers applied epidemiology at PHC4024 (4 carriers) and community health and epidemiology at HSC3201 (4). Register by number and expect to send a syllabus on transfer.
HSC4730 —Public Health Research Guide
Public Health Research — 7 institutions. Study design, measurement and the difference between an association and a finding; the course that makes the rest of the field legible.
HSC3032 —Foundations of Public Health Guide
Foundations of Public Health — 5 institutions. The upper-division survey: the ten essential services, the core disciplines, and how the American system is actually organised.
PHC2100 —Introduction to Public Health Request a guide
Introduction to Public Health — 5 institutions, and lower division, so it is the way in for a student still at the A.A. stage. ⚠ One of only three undergraduate PHC numbers with four or more carriers.
⚠ ⚠⚠ Of the 18 PHC courses carried by four or more Florida institutions, 14 are GRADUATE. Do not judge the prefix's undergraduate offering by what the PHC catalogue looks like.
PHC4101 —Overview of Public Health Programs and Policies Guide
Overview of Public Health Programs and Policy — 4 institutions. Programme planning and policy, which is squarely inside CHES's process-course category.
HSC3661 —Communication Theory and Pracice for Health Professions Request a guide
⚠ Communication Theory and Practice for Health — 5 institutions. Health communication is one of NCHEC's Nine Areas and a process course, so it counts toward the 12-credit minimum rather than the capped topic allowance.
PHC4024 —Applied Epidemiology Guide
Principles of Applied Epidemiology — 4 institutions. The applied treatment: outbreak investigation, surveillance and field methods rather than theory.
HSC3201 —Community Health and Epidemiology Request a guide
Community Health and Epidemiology — 4 institutions. Combines the two halves, and several programmes use it in place of a separate epidemiology course.
⚠ ⚠ Check whether your programme treats this as equivalent to HSC4500; some do and some require both.
HSC2100 —Personal and Community Health Guide
Personal Health — 14 institutions, the most widely carried HSC course at lower division. A general-education entry point, and a cheap way to test whether the subject interests you.
⚠ ⚠ Also numbered HSC1100 Personal and Community Health at 9 institutions. The two are close but not identical; the 1100 version carries the community half.
STA2023 —Elementary Statistics Guide
⚠⚠ Elementary Statistics — 39 institutions. Non-negotiable on this path. Epidemiology is applied statistics, and every graduate programme assumes it.
SYG2000 —Introduction to Sociology Guide
General Sociology — 29 institutions. Public health's explanatory framework is social rather than clinical, and this is where that starts.
PSY2012 —General Psychology Guide
Introduction to Psychology — 33 institutions. Health behaviour theory — the models programme planning is built on — comes from here.
BSC2085 —Anatomy and Physiology I Guide
Anatomy and Physiology I — 20 institutions. ⚠ Not universally required for a public health bachelor's, but graduate programmes and employers assume you can read clinical material.
⚠ ⚠ Two equivalent packagings: BSC2085 plus BSC2085L at 20 institutions, combined BSC2085C at 7.
MCB2010 —Microbiology Guide
Microbiology — 16 institutions. Infectious disease epidemiology is a large part of the field and it assumes you know what an organism does.
HSC3537 —Medical Terminology Request a guide
Medical Terminology — 6 institutions at upper division. Useful specifically because public health people spend their careers in rooms with clinicians who do not explain themselves.
⚠ ⚠ Also numbered HSC1531 at 16 institutions and HSC2531 at 8, both lower division and cheaper.
ENC1101 —English Composition I Guide
English Composition I — 39 institutions. Public health is funded by grant writing and answerable to public bodies; writing is not a soft skill here.

Where you can take these courses in Florida

39 Florida public institutions teach courses on this path. The count is how many of the 15 listed courses each one carries — it shows where the path is best covered. It is not a statement that a school offers this as a degree; for that, check the institution’s own programme list.

UF
University of Florida
10 of 15
UWF
University of West Florida
10 of 15
EFSC
Eastern Florida State College
8 of 15
FIU
Florida International University
8 of 15
IRSC
Indian River State College
8 of 15
UNF
University of North Florida
8 of 15
FAMU
Florida A & M University
7 of 15
FGCU
Florida Gulf Coast University
7 of 15
PBSC
Palm Beach State College
7 of 15
USF
University of South Florida
7 of 15
BC
Broward College
6 of 15
HC
Hillsborough College
6 of 15
SFC
Santa FE College
6 of 15
SSCF
Seminole State College of Florida
6 of 15
SPC
St. Petersburg College
6 of 15
UCF
University of Central Florida
6 of 15
CF
College of Central Florida
5 of 15
FGC
Florida Gateway College
5 of 15
FSCJ
Florida State College at Jacksonville
5 of 15
FSU
Florida State University
5 of 15
GCSC
Gulf Coast State College
5 of 15
MDC
Miami Dade College
5 of 15
PESC
Pensacola State College
5 of 15
SJRSC
St. Johns River State College
5 of 15
SCFMS
State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota
5 of 15
VC
Valencia College
5 of 15
FAU
Florida Atlantic University
4 of 15
FLPOLY
Florida Polytechnic University
4 of 15
PSC
Polk State College
4 of 15
SFSC
South Florida State College
4 of 15
TSC
Tallahassee State College
4 of 15
CFK
The College of the Florida Keys
4 of 15
FSWSC
Florida Southwestern State College
3 of 15
LSSC
Lake-Sumter State College
3 of 15
NCF
New College of Florida
3 of 15
NFC
North Florida College
3 of 15
NWFSC
Northwest Florida State College
3 of 15
PHSC
Pasco-Hernando State College
3 of 15
DSC
Daytona State College
2 of 15

Sources

Requirements change. These are the authorities that decide them — check them directly before committing to a route.

Last updated 23 September 2026.