Why I Quit My Toxic Work Environment and Found Clarity in Health Policy
I quit my toxic work environment in November. My reward? A 20k pay increase, private sector, profit sharing, better benefits, work from home more, and most importantly BETTER MENTAL HEALTH. I always wanted to pivot to the private sector because I heard so many benefits of being in that sector compared to the public sector. Health policy may be my thing! Health policies are so important because of you think of the five SDOHs: access to care and quality, education access and quality, social and community context, economic stability, and neighborhood and built environment factors ( Health People 2030). I am sure you will be able to identify a policy that supports or hinders the SDOH. If you think about a program that was created to address one of the SDOHs-I bet you can think of a policy that hindered the program’s success or made the program more successful.
Example: In 2012, Indiana had a statewide smoking ban that went into effect called the Smoke-Free Air Law (Indiana Government, 2024). The purpose of this law was to protect Hoosiers from exposure to harmful tobacco secondhand smoke. If a public health program aimed at decreasing secondhand tobacco smoke was implemented before 2012, your program may or may not be successful. You would have needed to get buy-in from legislatures to pilot and support your program. Do you think this will be easy? What if one of the people you need buy-in from invests in tobacco? Do you think they will support a program that will cause them to lose money?
However, now that this ban exists, you have buy-in from the legislature, and secondhand smoke will already be reduced due to this law that prohibits people from smoking tobacco in public places. This policy helps your program’s success.
The Health Department received a lot of pushback from initiatives. If the state is decentralized, you can not tell LHDs or local Health departments, what to do. You can only give them recommendations. What if they don’t have the funding? Policies create how much health departments get from state health departments. What if you don’t have the personnel? You need funding. Do you want to analyze data and identify gaps? Personnel=More $$$.
I felt like I was doing fluff work. Never really getting down to the root of the problem. Why do these health disparities exist? Why aren’t public health professionals paid equitably? Why are organizations understaffed? Why are there knowledge gaps between staff? Why is diversity lacking?
Answer? Policies! Policies!! POLICIES!!!