Australasian public health alumni employment outcomes

Bethany Howard; Holly Wild; Rochelle Scheid; Holly Donaldson; Dragan Ilic; Julia Choate

doi:10.1071/PU24105

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Australasian public health alumni employment outcomes

Bethany Howard ^A ^* , Holly Wild ^A , Rochelle Scheid ^A ^B , Holly Donaldson ^A ^C , Dragan Ilic ^A and Julia Choate ^B

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Vic, Australia.

^B Biomedical Discovery Institute, Monash University, Melbourne, Vic, Australia.

^C Council of Academic Public Health Institutions Australasia, Parkes, ACT, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: bethany.howard@monash.edu

Public Health Research and Practice 35, PU24105 https://doi.org/10.1071/PU24105

Submitted: 12 February 2025 Accepted: 29 April 2025 Published: 14 July 2025

© 2025 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of the Sax Institute. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Objectives and importance of study

Public health aims to improve health at scale through a variety of preventive, protective and response measures. As a deep and broad profession, public health necessitates a wide variety of roles, specialisations and career pathways. This breadth can lead to many public health students experiencing career uncertainty, particularly related to awareness of career options. Ensuring public health education prepares students for the workplace is essential to meet workforce needs. Understanding where graduates work, what they do and what skills they possess can inform career decisions of students and curriculum design to address industry requirements. This study aims to describe and discuss the employment outcomes of Australasian public health alumni using LinkedIn data.

Study type

Descriptive, observational study, using secondary data.

Methods

Data on 14,424 alumni, who graduated between 2011 and 2020, were collected from the alumni section of 36 Australasian university LinkedIn pages. Data on geographic location (‘where they live’), employment (‘where they work’ and ‘what they do’) and self-reported skills (‘what they are skilled at’) were recorded and analysed.

Results

Nearly all (95%) of the alumni had lived in an Australian location. Alumni most frequently worked in health care, community and social services, research, or education roles. Major employers included universities (43%), government (27%) and healthcare organisations (22%). Microsoft Office, public health, research skills, leadership, public speaking and project management were the most frequently reported skills, accounting for 51% of entries.

Conclusions

Tracking alumni via networking sites can provide institutions with valuable information on the skill sets required for employment within the sector and on the nature and scope of employment opportunities for graduates. This information can be used to develop and renew curricula of public health training programs to meet industry requirements. It also offers an opportunity to identify emerging trends, augmenting the requirement for a current training/workplace nexus.

Keywords: Australia, careers, graduate, LinkedIn, professional network, public health, skills, university.

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