Employment outcomes and job satisfaction of international public health professionals: What lessons for public health and COVID‐19 pandemic preparedness? Employment outcomes of public health graduates

Abstract

The profile of public health professionals (PHPs) and COVID-19 preparedness is assessed against the employment outcomes (EO), precarious employment (PE), and job satisfaction (JS) of the European Public Health Master programme alumni. The study is descriptive, crosssectional, conducted from May-October 2020. A survey was developed to assess the EO, PE and JS. Participants were recruited by email. SPSS statistics 26 version was used to perform descriptive analysis. A total of 189 PHPs participated (65% response) with majority women (66%), the mean age was 36 years. Participants were employed (80%), in non-governmental organisations (20%), and academia (19%). Common employment positions were managerial (37%) and consultancy (18%). Majority of PHPs were exposed to PE (81%), the most frequent elements were 'temporary employment' (54%), and 'the lack of labour union' (53%). The JS of PHPs was 'satisfied'. A blend of scientific public health knowledge and interpersonalThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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