Help picking school for Health Education undergrad

[cookderosa]

Have you tried looking at job openings in your area to see what they want? Most of the jobs in my area require a bachelor's degree or higher.

Yeah, I'm not going to bother with the Associates, and probably not with a Bachelor's either.

I see some Health Education Masters degrees for under $5500  However I don't know if I can do them faster than 2 years, which sounds like a long time. I think I saw one that was 1 year only, but I assumed it was too expensive.

I have to research Health Education degrees versus Health Sciences, Public Health, etc. I might just go with whatever is self-paced and cheap, if there is one. (Cheap in this case is $5500 or less.)

I'm not sure there's enough demand in general, so I'm not totally set on these.

My masters is in Nutrition, but if you look at the prefixes of my courses, several are health - enough of them are, that I could morph my resume by pulling in my health experiences if necessary. I'm not sure of your skill set, but you asked for a very very specific kind of bachelor's degree that is both hard to find and expensive - I assumed it was for a specific kind of career, but now you're more open to other ideas. If you are truly wanting health, there are TONS of options.

[Ideas]

My masters is in Nutrition, but if you look at the prefixes of my courses, several are health - enough of them are, that I could morph my resume by pulling in my health experiences if necessary.   I'm not sure of your skill set, but you asked for a very very specific kind of bachelor's degree that is both hard to find and expensive - I assumed it was for a specific kind of career, but now you're more open to other ideas.  If you are truly wanting health, there are TONS of options.

I didn't realize how many different careers were related. I need to learn a lot more. 

I'm probably not going to bother with another Bachelor's (BSBA will be my first). 

An MPH may be the best, because it's not going to pin me down in a specific area. I'm interested in the Education aspect, but now I see others that look good too. It seems a lot better to keep the options open.

It seems like half of the higher paying careers need a hard science degree or medical license, are managerial positions, or involve regular public speaking. I want to avoid those, but I think I would have some good options left. 

There seem to be jobs requiring skills in research, writing, marketing. Maybe IT or design? I haven't had a change to look a lot. And then the jobs like social work which are mostly lower paying, but mostly good.

I have a lot of interest in health. I'm good with learning IT, but some types aren't very interesting. It seems like most of my knowledge/experience is health, business, IT, psych, and some social work type activities and legal assisting. 

I used to be good at hard science and calculus I and maybe II, but now those seem so hard. I could learn some data science programming or math if it's worth it. I feel like I don't have a lot of time to reach my goals.

[sanantone]

My masters is in Nutrition, but if you look at the prefixes of my courses, several are health - enough of them are, that I could morph my resume by pulling in my health experiences if necessary.   I'm not sure of your skill set, but you asked for a very very specific kind of bachelor's degree that is both hard to find and expensive - I assumed it was for a specific kind of career, but now you're more open to other ideas.  If you are truly wanting health, there are TONS of options.

I didn't realize how many different careers were related. I need to learn a lot more. 

I'm probably not going to bother with another Bachelor's (BSBA will be my first). 

An MPH may be the best, because it's not going to pin me down in a specific area. I'm interested in the Education aspect, but now I see others that look good too. It seems a lot better to keep the options open.

It seems like half of the higher paying careers need a hard science degree or medical license, are managerial positions, or involve regular public speaking. I want to avoid those, but I think I would have some good options left. 

There seem to be jobs requiring skills in research, writing, marketing. Maybe IT or design? I haven't had a change to look a lot. And then the jobs like social work which are mostly lower paying, but mostly good.

I have a lot of interest in health. I'm good with learning IT, but some types aren't very interesting. It seems like most of my knowledge/experience is health, business, IT, psych, and some social work type activities and legal assisting. 

I used to be good at hard science and calculus I and maybe II, but now those seem so hard. I could learn some data science programming or math if it's worth it. I feel like I don't have a lot of time to reach my goals.

If you don't like public speaking, then health promotion/education would be a terrible idea.

[Ideas]

If you don't like public speaking, then health promotion/education would be a terrible idea.

I think a lot the HE/HP jobs are educating 1 person at a time (but their spouse or family might be there), or reading and writing reports, but I could be mistaken. As you said there aren't too many which are specifically needing HE/HP anyway. And it doesn't make sense to limit myself to schools with those degrees.

[sanantone]

If you don't like public speaking, then health promotion/education would be a terrible idea.

I think a lot the HE/HP jobs are educating 1 person at a time (but their spouse or family might be there), or reading and writing reports, but I could be mistaken. As you said there aren't too many which are specifically needing HE/HP anyway. And it doesn't make sense to limit myself to schools with those degrees.

I always check the City of Austin job ads, and their health promotion jobs mention giving presentations to the public and organizations.

[cookderosa]

If you don't like public speaking, then health promotion/education would be a terrible idea.

I think a lot the HE/HP jobs are educating 1 person at a time (but their spouse or family might be there), or reading and writing reports, but I could be mistaken. As you said there aren't too many which are specifically needing HE/HP anyway. And it doesn't make sense to limit myself to schools with those degrees.

Ideas- it's the opposite usually. The more specific /licensed you are, the more likely you'll be in a 1 on 1 setting. The reason for that is because (I'll use nutrition) a license allows me to provide medical nutrition therapy to a specific person regarding their specific health issue. To say, Bill, "you" should follow this prescribed diet to control "your" high blood pressure. Now, the kind of nutrition degree that I have does not allow me to give that kind of specific medical advice. Rather, I can teach a nutrition class (let's use cooking) and say "reducing the salt content in this recipe can help lower high blood pressure." The distinction is sharing (promoting) health and wellness to the population as opposed to medically managing a client . Does that make sense?
To further my point, there are a lot of health promotion and wellness jobs that are through hospitals - some are specific and want an an RN,and in those cases, the person in that job would likely be doing simple tests like blood pressure, etc. and doing an assessment that would then lead to them giving medical advice regarding the person's BMI/weight, blood pressure, etc.
My passion isn't working with sick people, so I didn't pursue that path. Even when I was considering nursing as a career years ago, it was always midwifery - since pregnancy is not an illness. So, I could see myself in a health promotion role that develops wellness initiatives, writes newsletters with recipes, etc. You should think through what kind of clients you'd like to work with and in what kind of setting. Once you get the master's it will be hard to want to get a different one lol.

[Ideas]

Ideas- it's the opposite usually.  The more specific /licensed you are, the more likely you'll be in a 1 on 1 setting.  The reason for that is because (I'll use nutrition) a license allows me to provide medical nutrition therapy to a specific person regarding their specific health issue.  To say, Bill, "you" should follow this prescribed diet to control "your" high blood pressure.  Now, the kind of nutrition degree that I have does not allow me to give that kind of specific medical advice.  Rather, I can teach a nutrition class (let's use cooking) and say "reducing the salt content in this recipe can help lower high blood pressure."  The distinction is sharing (promoting) health and wellness to the population as opposed to medically managing a client .  Does that make sense?
To further my point, there are a lot of health promotion and wellness jobs that are through hospitals - some are specific and want an an RN,and in those cases, the person in that job would likely be doing simple tests like blood pressure, etc. and doing an assessment that would then lead to them giving medical advice regarding the person's BMI/weight, blood pressure, etc.  
My passion isn't working with sick people, so I didn't pursue that path.  Even when I was considering nursing as a career years ago, it was always midwifery - since pregnancy is not an illness.  So, I could see myself in a health promotion role that develops wellness initiatives, writes newsletters with recipes, etc.  You should think through what kind of clients you'd like to work with and in what kind of setting.  Once you get the master's it will be hard to want to get a different one lol.

Well, I understand you're saying that some licenses/degrees lead mostly to 1 on 1, and some don't. And that I should choose before I start. 

But it seems difficult to figure out a path. I thought some of these had many options. I will have to do more research. 

Thanks.

[Ideas]

It looks like the research jobs can only be gotten with a lot of experience, and a lot of the writing jobs are just grants. There aren't all that many jobs in the area. I feel like it's risky to get a Masters in this field, for me

[a2jc4life]

It looks like you might have already decided, but in case it helps to add to your "information pool," Ashford has a Health Education bachelors: https://www.ashford.edu/online-degrees/h...-education

[Ideas]

It looks like you might have already decided, but in case it helps to add to your "information pool," Ashford has a Health Education bachelors: https://www.ashford.edu/online-degrees/h...-education

It seems far too expensive to go to Ashford