Research Field Guide
How to Get a Public Health Research Position
To get a Public Health research position, find professors who are actively publishing in Public Health, read what they actually work on, and email one of them a short, specific note. The work mixes in-person and computational tasks, so there is a way to help either on-site or remotely.
Below are 12 professors publishing in Public Health right now, what each is working on, and how to reach out. Every name and topic is pulled from real, recent publication data, not a generic list.
Public Health professors who are actively publishing
| Professor | Institution | Recent research focus |
|---|---|---|
| Graham A. Colditz | Washington University in St. Louis | Nutritional Studies and Diet |
| Paulo A. Lotufo | Universidade de São Paulo | Nutritional Studies and Diet |
| Simon I Hay | University of Washington | Malaria Research and Control |
| Gordon Guyatt | Impact | Clinical practice guidelines implementation |
| Elie A. Akl | American University of Beirut Medical Center | Clinical practice guidelines implementation |
| Frank B. Hu | Harvard University | Nutritional Studies and Diet |
| Jeremy Grimshaw | University of Ottawa | Clinical practice guidelines implementation |
| JoAnn E. Manson | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Nutritional Studies and Diet |
| Carlo La Vecchia | University of Milan | Nutritional Studies and Diet |
| Isabela M. Benseñor | Universidade de São Paulo | Nutritional Studies and Diet |
| Walter C. Willett | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Nutritional Studies and Diet |
| Tommi Vasankari | Tampere University | Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet |
Sourced from OpenAlex publication records. Click a name to see their full profile and recent papers.
What Public Health research involves
Public health studies how to keep populations healthy and how to prevent disease at scale. Active areas include malaria research and control, nutrition and diet, the implementation of clinical practice guidelines, and the links between obesity, physical activity, and health. The work is mixed. Some is field- and clinic-based: collecting data, running interventions, and working with communities. A large share is analytical and can be done remotely: cleaning survey data, running statistics, and conducting systematic reviews. For students, the remote analytical side is often the easiest way in, since professors can assign a literature review or a dataset to work on. Read recent papers to see whether a group is field-heavy or data-heavy.
How to email a Public Health professor
Public health professors frequently need help with data and evidence synthesis, which is good news if you are remote. Offer to help with a systematic review, clean and analyze survey or surveillance data, or summarize literature, and name any statistics tools you know (R, Stata, SAS). If you are local and the group does fieldwork, offer to help with data collection or community programs. Reference one recent paper, on nutrition or disease control, for instance, and ask a specific question about the methods or population. Mention epidemiology or statistics coursework. Keep your first ask concrete and modest, like one review or one analysis.
Public Health overlaps with nearby fields. If you are casting a wider net, look at research positions in Epidemiology, Immunology, and Psychology.