As a child, Stefanie Milroy knew what she wanted to be when she grew up thanks to her grandmother, who worked for the Guilford County Department of Public Health.
“I became interested in public health when I went to work with her,” Milroy says.
Her grandmother introduced her to the field, first folding letters to clients and later, when she was in high school, assisting with a car-seat safety awareness program. Alongside her grandmother, Milroy discovered her passion for the work.
“I thought about being a nurse, but that was more about treatment, and I wanted to focus on prevention,” says Milroy, community health educator for the Martinsville Henry County Coalition for Health and Wellness in Martinsville, Va., north of Eden.
She found the perfect fit in public health, which focuses on health and disease prevention in a variety of settings, including hospitals, nonprofits and public health departments. Milroy graduated from UNCG in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in public health, but she didn’t feel her education was complete.
“I always knew I wanted to do something on a director’s level, where I could really make a difference,” says Milroy, 28.
In the public health field, a master’s degree is considered an entry-level degree for leadership positions, so Milroy decided to go straight to graduate school. Although she was accepted at other schools, she decided that the Master of Public Health program (MPH) at UNCG best met her needs.
Programs at other schools may ask students to pick a specialty such as occupational health or biostatistics. But UNCG’s program offers a “strong general degree,” says Dr. Michael Perko, associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Public Health Education at UNCG. The curriculum combines the science of health and the art of understanding human behavior. Students get a broad background in scientific research, but also learn how to turn that research into relevant programs for particular communities.
Perko says public health is a growing field as the federal government focuses on disease prevention as a way to cut health-care costs, and the generalist track prepares graduates for a wide range of jobs.
“Our students can open up the paper and circle five different jobs,” he says. Graduates of the MPH program might work for a community-based organization, help run a nonprofit foundation or lobby for policy changes on the state or national level.
The program emphasizes learning outside of the classroom. “Public health is one of those fields where you are going to get dirty,” Perko says. “In fact, our motto is, ‘Don’t let your school work get in the way of your education.’”
Students must complete an internship in their field of interest during their third semester. For her internship, Milroy worked with the local YWCA to develop a program encouraging teen mothers to breast-feed. “The MPH program challenges you to get out into the community,” she says. “It really prepares students for what we see out in the real world.”
Milroy, who earned her master’s degree in 2006, also met her husband, Jeff, in the MPH program. He recently completed the doctoral program in public health at UNCG, earning a DrPH, and is program director with Prevention Strategies, a research company affiliated with UNCG.
And Stefanie Milroy is fulfilling the dream she first discovered by simply tagging along with her grandmother.
“It’s more than just a paycheck,” she says. “You get small rewards every day, watching people progress.”
Career Tracks, which publishes on the third Sunday of the month, focuses on education options available at public and private schools and learning facilities in the Triad. Have a suggestion? Contact Patrick Collins at 412-5934 or patrick.collins@news-record.com.
