Because there’s such a diverse array of occupations open to those with a master’s degree in public health, there’s also a wide range of salaries you can expect when you complete your program. While community health care workers earn an average salary of about $33,300, according to the latest available figures from Indeed, the average pay for biostatisticians is more than three times as high, at about $120,000.
Employment for mathematicians and statisticians, the category in which biostatisticians are grouped, is expected to grow 33% from 2020 to 2030. With higher demand for health care industry workers across the board, more biostatistician roles may be needed. For example, epidemiologist jobs are expected to grow 30% in that time frame.
Biostatisticians develop and apply statistical tools that help with collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, to provide quantitative evidence to answer pressing questions in medicine, biology, and public health, says Amie Hwang, an assistant professor of clinical population and public health sciences and director of the master of public health program at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.
Because biostatisticians possess the statistical skills applicable to health-related issues, the pandemic rocketed the profession’s already high demand even higher.
“We are seeing an upsurge of applications, and COVID-19 probably plays a huge role in it,” says Ken Chui, associate professor and co-leader of the epidemiology and biostatistics concentration in the master of public health program at Tufts University. “A lot of incoming applicants are very passionate about doing something about COVID-19 and preventing, or preparing for, the next pandemic.”
Fortune spoke with Chui and Hwang to find out how master’s degree programs in public health (MPH) are addressing the demand for biostatisticians, and how salaries reflect this demand.
Who should become a biostatistician?
A biostatistician should have good quantitative and computational skills, analytic capability, and be detail-oriented, Hwang says. They will be diligent as well in updating their skills as the industry develops quickly.
“Biostatisticians also need to be good team players, capable of readily translating their results for a wider audience,” Hwang adds. “This is a skill critical in building a positive career trajectory.”
Epidemiology, which is the study of how disease spreads and evolves across time and populations, is coupled with a quantitative evaluation of all those patterns and trends. At Tufts and USC, epidemiology and biostatistics are both included in the same MPH concentration.
“I personally like that approach, because it’s very hard to study the context without the math, or the math without the context,” Chui says.
Someone who wants to pursue an MPH to become a biostatistician does not have to be excellent at math, but they cannot be afraid of it, Chui notes. It also does not hurt to have some experience with computer programs and statistical analysis software.
“An MPH candidate should be genuinely interested in improving health in some way, be curious, and have a sense of responsibility and pride in doing this kind of work,” he says.
Health policy is also something that is on a lot of MPH students’ minds nowadays, including epidemiology and biostatistics students, he adds. As the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted, it is difficult to talk about improving public health without being able to navigate policy and politics.
More data means more data personnel
Apart from COVID-19, there are other reasons behind the increasing need for biostatisticians. One explanation for the surge in demand is the advancement of technology and subsequent increase in data available for research.
Now, there is even more data collected, including from social networks and electronic health records, and aggregated data from devices like the Fitbit, Chui says. “We have this huge amount of data sitting in our warehouse, and that has played a pretty big role in driving the demand for people who can get their hands dirty and work through the data itself.”
Programs like the one at USC are focused on training students in applied data analysis using example data sets and teaching them multiple statistical programming languages. Many biostatisticians can end up working as data scientists, Hwang says.
There’s more interest in biostatistics across multiple sectors
Primarily, pharmaceutical companies, health care providers, public health departments, insurance companies, and academia hire biostatisticians, Hwang says. However, the skill set developed by biostatisticians is also in high demand at big tech companies, advocacy and policy organizations, as well as news and media sectors.
Still, it’s more likely that a biostatistician will earn a six-figure salary in a private sector role, Chui says. Biostatisticians seeking roles in nonprofits or the public sector may need to manage their salary expectations.
Meanwhile, private companies and startups are using data to invest in technology for the health industry. “A lot of companies are starting to put aside a budget for this kind of work and would prefer someone who actually was trained in it rather than having some people from out of the field to work on it,” Chui says.
Organizations in the nonprofit sector are using data to advance their advocacy efforts and improve the persuasiveness of their argument or for their grant proposals. There are also more research opportunities in the sector owing to numerous factors over the past decade, Chui says.
And there’s a lot of interest in these types of roles as a result of public health crises, like the opioid epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic, along with more money going into scientific research and the creation of more methods to see, show, and analyze data.
One thing that Chui encourages graduates, especially those going into the private sector, to think about is how to use and collect data ethically and equitably.
“If we can introduce more people who have a strong ethics training and public health training to the private sector, I think we can help address some of the problems we are seeing today,” he says.
See how the schools you’re considering fared in Fortune’s rankings of the best master’s in public health programs, business analytics programs, data science programs, and part-time, executive, full-time, and online MBA programs.
