1.5 Starting a Career in Health Policy

Professor Holly Jarman, PhD from the University of Michigan discusses some tips for thinking about careers in health policy. What are the core skills you might need? What are the different types of policy careers? What are the next steps? Keep calm, here are some answers!

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• Music: 'Blippy Trance' by Kevin MacLeod

Transcript

Holly Jarman : 0:08

Hello, and welcome to the HMP governance lab podcast. My name is Holly Jarman. I'm a faculty member in the Department of Health Management and policy at the University of Michigan. And today, I'm going to talk a little bit about some policy career options. So what can you do with your master's degree or PhD in health management and policy? And where can you go from here? What are the things that you should be thinking about as you move into a policy career? And this podcast today goes with a set of slides that you can find in the Episode Notes on the HMP governance lab website. So, you've decided that you want a career in health policy, and that the problem with saying that is that there are so many different possible careers in health policy. And so I'm going to talk to you today about some of the things you might need to know. We're going to talk about what are some beneficial skills for different health policy? jobs? Because I think because the policy market is so flexible, and in some ways ad hoc, and the opportunities don't necessarily come up on a routine basis, taking a skills based approach, I think is better than thinking about... 'Okay, I'm going to definitely do this kind of very specific job', you might be surprised at some of the opportunities that are out there. So we're going to talk about skills. We're going to talk about some common health policy roles. So what are the types of jobs that some of our graduates of the program have taken on? And what do those jobs entail? We're going to talk a little bit about the next steps as you move through our programs. So what should you be thinking about and how should you be approaching developing those beneficial skills in order to land, the job of your dreams, hopefully. And then I'll point you to back to the slides where there are some useful resources for thinking about policy careers. We are lucky to have a great career center in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. So we will be directing you there. Okay. So, first of all, what do I mean when I'm talking about beneficial skills? Well, to make it super simple for us, I have divided these into three categories. You need analytical skills, political skills, and professional skills. Now, first of all, what do I mean by analytical skills, so it's not enough to be personable in this kind of role. A lot of the time, you are going to have to make critical judgments about policies about data. And so any kinds of skills that you can build up that help you to analyze data and make judgments about relationships and patterns are going to serve you well. And so sometimes I talk about these with my advisees and I say, okay, you need 'crunchy' skills. And what I mean by that is, you don't just need soft skills, which are very important things like good communication, good professional presentation, and so on. You need some some crunchy analytical skills where you can take a look at some data and you can come to conclusions based on that data -that is why. And to break that down further with just a couple of examples. These might be quantitative, so you might want to be able to collate data present compelling descriptive data, conduct policy analysis using statistics, maybe you are really into economic methods, which is very popular in policy. Or maybe you are taking more of an engineering / Decision Sciences route and you want to model different systems. So any of these kinds of skills can be helpful for you. I think though, too, it's important to point out that you have to apply these skills in context. So understand government budgets, understand business models, those skills are also very important for you, as in an analytical role in terms of a policy career. Qualitative skills, though, so I'm going to pause for a moment and say, I am so biased because I'm a qualitative researcher. And I think that more and more, I'm seeing students needing to tap into qualitative skills. What I mean by that, well, qualitative research skills are really focused around understanding relationships, understanding, fuzzier data. So can you conduct an individual or a group interview like a focus group? Can you organize a set of interviews and maybe design a project around that? Can you maybe make observations through site visits? Can you conduct a literature review? Can you analyze this qualitative data in a systematic way. So a number of these skills are really important for evaluative type positions. So maybe you work for a think tank, in a research institution or outside of academia, but still in a research position, or some other evaluative role, where you actually have to go talk to people and figure out the system and figure out what works. And these communication skills, these qualitative analysis skills will come in handy. And so you need to figure out how to use your methodological toolbox, your analytical toolbox, and bring together the appropriate quantitative and qualitative skills in a research design. So we're on to number two now, which is the political skills. So here I'm really referring to your ability to both understand politics and your ability to manipulate politics. Really, So you need to have knowledge here of the political regulatory, the legal systems that affect health and the process of making policy. And so some of that knowledge is very context -context specific. But overall, I think understanding the way the political system works is super helpful in terms of policymaking because you're going to understand what might be possible. Secondly, I think you need to have this kind of translational set of skills. So there are a lot of policy jobs where you have to monitor the political environment, and then kind of translate it for an audience. So either you might be within an organization and you're trying to understand on a day to day basis, what's happening in a particular area of policy that really concerns you. And then maybe you're translating that for your bosses within the organization and trying to make use of that information to then go back to the political system and ask for changes to policy or interpret policy in different ways to politicians, this kind of translation or set of skills can be really important. And then this idea that you also thirdly should have strategic skills. So can you formulate strategies to create change. So this is a bigger picture set of skills. Most people can do advocacy on a day to day basis. I think it takes a lot of commitment to do advocacy, over multiple years, develop relationships, set a strategic direction, and figure out how to change a system to your advantage. That to me is some higher level stuff. And so these political skills kind of are leading up to, hopefully a better strategic understanding of how to get the political system to go where you want it to go. So the third category of skill is professional skills. And these professional skills will be a little bit more familiar to you because they're very common. But I hope that they show you a little bit about the overlap between policy careers and management careers. There is so much commonality here and people I think quite often don't realize that. So the professional skills you need, above all communication, you need to be able to connect with other people and communicate your intent clearly. So that really means a lot of relationship building. A lot of especially advocacy roles are really founded on your ability to build a warm relationship with someone else that you might not have anything in common with. So and can you build up that reputation over time and persist with that relationship? Can you present your views in a clear way? Can you do things like handle the media can you make your argument clearly enough that it could be broadcast without being misconstrued. And you do need to write well in a range of formats. I can't emphasize enough how much PowerPoint will not get you by you have to be able to write, essentially copy. So, a news story or blog post a create some kind of infographic maybe, or white paper newsletter, one pager, a lot of this service centers on the written word. And so your written communication is key. Secondly, you know what, you have to have a whole group of management skills, you've got to particularly be able to manage projects, keeping them on track, quite often without a lot of collaboration with others. So within some of the smaller organizations in particular, you might be the only person working on that project. You might not be in a large team or you might be trying to manage a team have volunteers even or people who have some time commitment but aren't necessarily full time on the project. So those kinds of skills managing other people managing projects are incredibly important. Also too, you have to understand how to develop an organization. So, as an advocate, maybe as a lobbyist, as someone who is in this kind of translational role, public facing role within an organization where you're dealing with policy, you have to think about your organization and where it is heading. So you have to understand even if you're not doing fundraising, how to fundraise, and how that works within your organization, you might well be in a position where you have to understand how to raise money from the federal government from foundations in order to be able to do the work that you want to do. So that kind of management skill is really important. Finally, I do want to say, you do need to cultivate some resilience. You might be working independently, you might be working in a tough environment. So some of these roles do have lower pay and resources than other comparable roles in the private sector. The nonprofit sector in particular is not very well paying. And so you might be necessarily are in a lower resource environment and on lower pay. You might also be dealing with some nasty politics. There's some lot of disagreement in the country right now and globally. So you have to be upfront with yourself about that. Now, that doesn't mean you can't find meaning in your work and it can't be fulfilling. That's absolutely not what I'm saying. But you do have to be aware that some of these, these parts of the job will be tough. So let's talk about some common health policy roles. And this is where if you're following along with the slides, it'd be really helpful to look at the diagram but I'll do my best to do describe this in audio only. So I've put these roles in terms of a continuum between some jobs which are more analytical in nature and some jobs which are more political in nature, just to help you understand the wide diversity of opportunities that there are here. So, on the analytical side, I would say the most analytical kind of role is a sort of academic role, like the one that I do, where you're working in a university maybe or in a university affiliated Think Tank, or in a non University affiliated Think Tank where you're, by Think Tank, I mean, an organization of people who work out policy ideas, do research on policy and try and fit the policy and evidence together. So you could be an academic in largely in a university setting where you are going to be doing a combination of teaching, research and service activities. And though that varies widely, depending on the kind of college that you're at, most of these academic roles will require a PhD. So if you're the kind of person who thinks Yes, I might take another step and go on to do research degree, do come and see me because it's worth thinking carefully about where you end up and the environment that you're in before you take that step. Now, academic roles are very closely related to what I've called an analyst role. And you could be an analyst outside government. So in those think tanks that I mentioned, and you could be an analyst in government even so you could be working for a government department and do the same kind of analytical research based things. So in these analyst roles, you're not necessarily taking on the full job of an academic so you probably won't be teaching you and only students in that sense but you'd be doing much of the same research tasks that an academic would do. And so you'll be managing product research projects, formulating the design, carrying out the research, and then packaging, analyzing and packaging the results for a particular audience. Then in the middle of my diagram, I've got government affairs. So government affairs can be carried out in two different ways. So you might be in a government affairs person, like a lobbyist, or an advocate that works for an independent organization, probably a private sector, organization, maybe a nonprofit organization. And so, as a government affairs person, it's your job to understand the political landscape and the policy landscape and understand what's happening at any particular time, and you're going to be informing your client. So in an external government affairs role, your client will be maybe a private business, maybe coalition of industry, maybe a bunch of hospitals may be a profession, maybe a nonprofit organization, but you'll be that external government affairs person who is brought in to inform a particular organization. So it's much closer to some kind of consulting really. But you could also be a government affairs person in house. So you do the same kinds of lobbying and advocacy, so formulating a strategy on behalf of your organization to interface with the policy, sphere and political system, but you're doing it in house as part of the organization. So that is really a bit distinct because you're going to be working with the same organization all the time. Professional lobbyists tend to work on a per contract basis. So they might be working with one organization one day, and one organization the other day, and so that will suit some people who really don't have very strong political views and don't necessarily want to represent one side over the other. If it won't necessarily suit everybody, because some people would much rather work for a single organization with a viewpoint that matches their own. So we're moving over towards the political side of things. And the next role, I think is really important is that of a legislative staffer. So legislative staffers are work for members of the various legislatures in at the state level and nationally, and so those staff members are really specializing in a particular policy area. Now, you might be a legislative director on the one hand, one of our alums is a legislative director for rasheeda Talib. And so it's been great to watch him do that work. Now, as a legislative director, you might be figuring out what pieces of legislation or policies your member is going to support. And then figuring out a strategy to get those things passed. And so in that kind of a role, you really really need good political communication and excellent rapport with other people and be able to build those Coalition's you also need for this kind of role really expert knowledge of a particular set of policies. And you might have to bear in mind that some legislative stuff has cover very large policy briefs. So you might not necessarily be working on specific areas of health policy that you really want to specialize in. But you might have to deal with that, frankly. So you could be a legislative director, you could be a legislative slot staffer with a particular policy brief. And it's your job to represent your elected representative and manage their policy agenda. Now, there were a couple of related roles here on the political side. The next one is being some kind of organizer -so here rather than representing a member of Congress or a legislature, you are actually having a very, you're representing an organization and trying to bring people together, but you might have a much more public facing role. So here, you might be organizing on behalf of a trade union or a nonprofit, or a community based organization. And there your role is to try and bring together and inspire people, get them around the same agenda and get them committed to taking an action. And so, again, initiative is really important here, your personal skills and your ability to form relationships with other people, many of whom might be volunteers might have very strong particular views about politics and policy. You need to be able to navigate all of that and bring that together and unify people. Finally on the slide, I've got health officials. So this is the point at which you run for office. I want to say that nationally, we do not have enough people who are qualified and knowledgeable about public health, or even the health system in public office. We need you. We need younger people, we need more diverse candidates. And so if you've ever considered running for office, really think about whether there is a role for you alongside another career or as your main career as a public official. We really do need very good people who particularly understand the value of health and the health sector. Okay, so these are my common health policy roles. So what should you do with all this information that I just blasted at you? Well, there's a couple of things that I think are just general tips for taking this forward. I think by this point, you might have had a reaction to the different jobs that I described. And think about either people you know, or what you know about those kinds of roles and whether they would suit you or not? I think there's a couple of ways to explore that. I think first of all, one of the most important things you can do for policy jobs is to network. I think even more so then managerial roles because you need to understand how policy jobs get advertised. A lot of policy jobs are advertised, but they are generally on an ad hoc basis. With the management careers. There are some very structured opportunities like fellowships, where it's guaranteed pretty much that they'll come up every year, and we know the players, whereas the health policy sector is just so much more diverse. And we never know, especially in times of economic crisis, where the jobs are going to be so networking is one of the best ways to try to figure that out. But I've put on my slide, you need to network the fun way. So I really think that networking around things that you enjoy doing and the people and issues that you enjoy will really help you here. Like Don't force yourself to trawl through LinkedIn endlessly. I think you should use LinkedIn. And also you'll have access to H net, which is our alumni database, which can be very helpful for figuring out careers. But network the fun way to figure out what you enjoy and who is doing that work, and try to reach out to them. There is nothing wrong with sending blind emails to people, trying to connect with them on LinkedIn and taking the initiative to try and do that and say if you have two minutes, I'd love to hear from you. About how you do the things you do. People notice that and I think it can be valuable. My second tip is to try to build up some specialization, you don't want to get too narrow. But I do recommend that you spend some time outside of class learning about the organizations and the policies in some specific policy areas that actually animate you. So if I were you, I would go and find it. Let's say you have a really strong interest in trying to alleviate the issue of infant or maybe maternal mortality. And so maybe you want to figure out exactly who is working in that space. What advocacy organizations exist in that space, which representatives actually champion these issues in your state in your local area nationally. If you're into global health, which organizations and donor organizations are actually focusing on those issues, so understanding that landscape before organizations as well as policy areas specifically, can really help you out. And the more you do that, even in one area, the quicker you will be able to do that in any other future area of health policy. It is a learned skill, figuring out these networks of organizations. And thirdly, I'd say, do some volunteering of your time. But allocate your time wisely. So don't rush out and think in the first week of classes that you have to do 10 different extracurricular things. I think you should pick a couple of things that you enjoy that actually speak to you and that balance out your academic work, and finding that work that is meaningful to you and then figuring out from that, okay, I did that meaningful work, I did that networking, I understood this policy area, but then going back to skills, what skills have I demonstrated by doing that voluntary work. So I really think that the emphasis on cross sectional cross disciplinary cross the main skills is going to serve you really well here, if you can say, here's what I did. And it is an example of me using my communication skills well, or building up relationships, or inspiring people, or crunching data, or understanding navigating the political system. So ultimately, I think, do what you enjoy, and the things that will bring you meaning to some extent, but then also be smart about that, and draw out the cross jurisdictional skills that will then apply in the context of applying to a future employer. All right, that's all my pearls of wisdom for now. But please do come and find me. You can email me if you would like to have an appointment, I have regular office hours, which are open to anybody during the fall semester. So come and find me if you're in need of some extra advice. But otherwise, if you look at my PowerPoint, you'll find there's a list of nice resources to get you going. And then hopefully that will start you off in your policy search. So, I really hope that you this was useful to you. Thank you for listening, and I hopefully will get to talk to many more of you in the near future. Bye for now. This has been a podcast of the University of Michigan Health Management and Policy Governance Lab. If you're interested in our research, you can find more podcasts and blog posts at our website, www.hmpgovernancelab.org and follow us on Twitter @HMPgovlab.