Why I Chose a Master of Public Health: A Graduate’s Journey from Student to Epidemiologist
Public health is more than a profession—it’s a mission. In this Q&A, we speak with, Kathrine Mansfield, MPH22, a graduate of Tufts University’s Master of Public Health (MPH) program, now a Child/Adolescent School-Based Health Epidemiologist with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. From choosing a school with flexibility and rigor to leading statewide data strategies that impact young lives, this alum shares what drives her work, how her MPH prepared them for it, and what advice she has for future public health leaders.
What inspired you to pursue a Master of Public Health (MPH)?
"I intentionally shifted my career to focus on public health when I realized that I could help prevent the need for medical care. We only have so much time to live, and getting to work to reduce the amount of suffering we must endure while we’re here is one of the most rewarding career paths. It is motivating to intentionally focus on doing work with the most positive impact rather than work that tries to address problems that could have been prevented with proper public health intervention. What keeps me working in this field is that public health work has saved and protected countless lives, and I can support it in protecting and saving even more."
Why did you choose Tufts for your MPH, and how did the program prepare you for your current role?
"I chose Tufts because of its stellar public health reputation and online MPH with a concentration in epidemiology and biostatistics, which allowed me to learn from fantastic faculty while being physically located where I wanted to be. I am grateful as my now future self that I chose Tufts— it allowed me to learn from brilliant people without being tied to a single location. That flexibility has also allowed me to see the value in greater flexibility for others. If an institution like Tufts can make a flexible and rigorous academic program work, I can also have high standards while not imposing needless structure.
Tufts prepared me to find and address public health problems collaboratively while also using data effectively. I understood from the start that data, and what people enter as data, is driven by many motivations and interpretations of questions, which has served me well in creating and optimizing a variety of data collection strategies. Learning best practices for survey design and data collection methods, programmatic evaluation skills, and data analysis techniques prepared me with the baseline knowledge necessary to support the important work done by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health."
How does your MPH background inform your work as a School-Based Health Epidemiologist?
"My MPH informs my work daily. The Epidemiology and Biostatistics track focused on collaboration and effective data collection, analysis, and dissemination to make useful and enduring change that supports communities (rather than harming or extracting from them). My training made it clear that collaboration is essential, not optional, in building the best possible solution to problems. In my MPH, I was trained in data management and coding skills that supported me in learning subsequent statistical coding languages. My MPH program also emphasized the importance of creating appropriate documents, whether those be reports or infographics, for your intended audience."
What’s most rewarding about working in public health?
"Working in public health lets me focus on improving the health of my community with other people who are dedicated to the cause. As someone who has had family members die preventable deaths, it is my mission to help protect the lives of others."
Can you walk us through a typical day in your current role?
"Answering questions, anticipating questions, and building strategies! I am in a unique position where I get to answer questions posed by people whose organizations need to submit data to the department, project manage and program data collection tools, create guidance about how to use the forms, and analyze the data collected in them. Some of this is, as a former math teacher used to say, 'finding the most elegant solution' to meet the need. I get to do practical problem solving daily and I am grateful that I can use my love of problem solving to support health."
What skills or knowledge from your MPH program have you found to be most impactful in your role?
"The most important knowledge I took away from my MPH was trusting that the group of people you are working to support, as a collective, knows better than any authority figure what they need. We need a mix of trust and healthy skepticism, which is a difficult thing to do consistently and effectively."
What challenges or opportunities have you encountered in your career that your MPH helped you navigate?
"My MPH made it clear that building a trusted network of people who have expertise is important, and that has helped me be more effective in my career."
Are there any specific public health tools, data analysis methods, or strategies you've learned during your MPH that you use regularly?
"Framing questions to ask what we truly want to know, which sounds simple if you’ve never had to get hundreds or thousands of people to interpret something in precisely the same way! This includes testing survey questions that many people may think are framed appropriately but testing can unveil as misinterpreted in ways we can address."
How has the MPH opened doors for you, and how do you see your future in the field?
"My MPH is the reason that I am qualified to work as an epidemiologist. Tufts gave me access to research opportunities as a student that built my data analysis skills that I use in my current work. I see my future in the field as wide open! Unlike medicine where you are so specialized that you need a new residency to swap focus, my MPH has prepared me to go into any direction that I choose at any point in time."
What advice would you give to those pursuing an MPH or entering the public health field?
"Find ways to say yes to opportunities to build skills and connections. Talk with your professors about their passions. Build your skills in internships that you might feel are a stretch for your current skill set. Lead with curiosity in every organization you support. Also, many public health professionals know one another, much like residents of a small state, so always strive to make strong working relationships with everyone you meet."