39. Navigating the Politics of Public Health
It is clear to me that one major thing our MPH programs or graduate schools don’t set us up for is the politics of public health. In our industry, we are surrounded by people who think like us. But then we get out into the field, and there are so many people in our communities or elected positions that believe very differently, and we are woefully underprepared for this.
All public health is political, and all issues have always been and will continue to be political issues. Whether you believe they should be or not is redundant; they are. But we don’t have to resist this or try to turn them into non-political issues, it is possible to accept this and still do your job and see the value in your work.
In part two of this three-part series, my goal is for you to have a deep understanding of the political nature of public health and learn how to navigate it so you can stop wasting time, stress, and energy, trying to make it non-political. Find out the biggest reason you are struggling with accepting this, and why just because you accept something, doesn’t mean you have to agree with it.
If you’re struggling at work, burnt out, overwhelmed, hate your boss, or at the end of your rope after a year-and-a-half of dealing with a pandemic, I have an amazing free course beginning in 2022. It’s packed with simple, direct content that you can easily consume over your lunch break to help you feel better and less stressed in 2022. Join the 2022 course waitlist here!
What You Will Discover:
The reason that all public health issues are political.
An example of a huge political fight that went on for decades that people now think is neutral.
What is really causing you so much stress and suffering about the politics of the pandemic.
Why it is perfectly OK to leave the profession if you don’t want to accept the politics of public health.
The problem with not accepting that public health is political.
Why public health will always be political.
Resources:
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Full Episode Transcript:
If you're two to five years out of your MPH degree, love public health, but find yourself secretly unhappy at work and maybe even thinking about quitting your job, then this is the podcast for you. I'm Marissa McKool, host of the Thoughts Are Your Root Cause podcast. Join me each week as I share tips, tools, and resources to help you have the career you've always dreamed of without any of the stress you are experiencing right now. Come along.
Hi everyone, welcome back. This is a part two of a three-part series around the experience public health professionals are having currently during the pandemic two years in and with this current surge. Last week we talked about when you, the public health professional, gets COVID, and how you can be kinder to yourself, and how to deal with your brain.
This week we're going to be talking about the politics of public health. Next week we're going to be talking about how you can deal with those anti-vaxxers or anti-maskers or any anti-public health people you know. Let's jump right into it. Let's talk about the politics of public health.
So many of you all, I have heard from so many of you. I've gotten emails and questions about it, about how to deal with the politics of public health. How to deal with what's happening in the pandemic, and how folks are—public health is becoming politicized. COVID is becoming politicized, policies getting in the way and governments getting in the way, and politicians are getting in the way. We're divided, so that's getting in the way.
It's clear to me, MPH programs or whatever other program graduate school you went to did not prepare you for is the politics of public health. I remember when I was getting my MPH, my main interest was violence prevention. I guess it was like, seven years ago now, I was in the only injury and violence prevention class offered, like, remotely. And they had guest speakers from the CDC who came and talked about their work and gun violence.
I asked them, well, how do you deal with the fact that gun violence is such a heated, hot, political issue? And I was really left—I don't know what the right word is, but not necessarily disappointed, but like yearning for more with their answer. Essentially what they said is, well, we just have to wait until there's the right political window.
That's not necessarily like a wrong answer, right? In policy, that is what happens. You have to wait for the right person to get elected, or unfortunately, something happening you know in our communities or in our society or that the media brings up to like get that window in where there's momentum and interest and all of that. So, that is legit.
But it kind of left me being like, well, that's it? Right? Public health just waits on the sidelines? And even folks who are in health policy, there's not full preparation for dealing with the politics of public health. And in our MPH, we are surrounded by people who think like us in many ways, right? Most people who go get an MPH believe in science. They believe in prevention. They believe in health, right?
But, then we get out into the field, and we're doing this work, and there are so many people whether they're in our communities or they're in elected positions who don't believe in that, or believe very differently or hold different views or take different actions. And we are woefully underprepared for this.
And this pandemic and the level of politics that we have seen involved in public health in this response has been alarming and shocking to so many folks in public health. So, let's talk through this and how you navigate this. There's one main thing you need to do. By the end of this episode, my goal is for you to walk away having a deep understanding of this, and that is, in order to navigate this political nature of the pandemic, you have to accept that public health, no matter the topic, has always been and will always be political.
And I know it's not what you want to hear. But it's so important for you to hear. Just because your MPH program didn't prepare you for it, even if it was focused in health policy, doesn't mean it's not true. Public health has never truly been a bipartisan issue. It's never been not political. Reproductive health, abortion access, family planning, to name a few, have always been a political fight in America and across the world.
There are protests in nearly all abortion clinics in America at any given time. There are parents yelling at school board meetings about sex education being offered. Even basic healthcare rights and access and affordability have always been a fight. And now, even with the Affordable Care Act, we still have to fight to keep it and expand it.
There are lobbyists from private health insurance companies donating big bucks to political leaders to change it. There are businesses suing not to have to cover health insurance or certain types of coverage for their employees. And even topics in public health we think of as "bipartisan" and not political. What most people accept as neutral public health issues weren't always that way.
Smoking cigarettes was a huge political fight for decades to publish the research, to get money for the research, to implement smoking bans and policies, to put warning labels on things, even seat belts y'all. I saw someone post this when I think the vaccine mandates started happening. Of this person, it must have been in the 90s, who was on video saying that the new seat belt laws were impeding their freedom.
We're American, right? Even seatbelts which now most people see the benefit of and wear. That was very political during the implementation. The biggest reason you're struggling with the political nature of this pandemic is because you believe public health should not be political. So, you're resisting it being political.
You don't want it to be. You believe it shouldn't be, and this is what's causing you so much stress and suffering. It is not the fact that public health is political, or this pandemic is political. That's not what's causing you this stress. It's a fact that you are resisting that truth and not accepting that public health is political.
And you resist that truth because you don't have an answer for the why public health is political or why this public health topic is political. You believe if you knew the answer of why then you'd feel better. It would calm you. And then you and public health as a whole would know what to do about it, could fix it, could change people's minds.
Then, everyone would calm down, and it would all be fine. But that isn't true either. That's a false sense of potential security you're never going to achieve. So, we know why abortion access is political, for example. Some people hold a belief abortion is murder. Some people don't want women to be able to opt-out of motherhood. Some people believe it's against God's will and many other reasons.
We know most of those reasons why. Yet most of us in public health and especially those who work in reproductive health don't feel better just because we know all of the reasons why people are against abortion access. We don't have better solutions for making it nonpolitical. We don't have better strategies for changing those people's minds.
In fact, for most of us, and I'm speaking from lived experience here, it makes it harder and more frustrating to understand and know the reasons why people don't support abortion access or reproductive health access and do the work. And it makes it harder because we hold very opposite beliefs, and also we believe we need to change their mind to do our job.
And the same goes for a topic in public health you might even consider not political. Let's go with bullying, for example, right? Bullying on the surface appears to be a nonpolitical topic. It's a public health topic that really started to pick up traction at the right political moment, you could say. We don't see protests about anti-bullying campaigns currently. The news doesn't cover people upset at federal funding going to this initiative.
But it is political; why is that? Because there are people out there who don't believe public health should spend money on it. There are people who don't want their kids participating in those programs. There are people who believe being bullied a little bit is important for character building. Right?
Here's part of the underlying issue here, we associate the word political to mean bad. Something being political we believe is controversial, which we believe is bad. And that's part of the reason we react so strongly when we think public health issues have become political or are political, right? Because we don't think public health is bad.
We don't want to be viewed as bad or controversial. So, of course, public health can't be political. But public health issues are not political because they are inherently controversial or bad. They are political because they are intrinsically intertwined and have to do with government policy. They're political because they are tied to government funding and programs and guidance and practice.
They're political because they have to deal with government management, support, and response to community issues and needs. All of public health is political, and all public health issues are and will continue to be political issues. The politics of public health don't need to be solved. Meaning we don't need to figure out how to make COVID or any other public health topic not political.
We don't have to solve for that and turn it into a nonpolitical issue. They simply are political and always will be political. You need to accept that public health itself is a field, and all the work within it is political. Stop wasting so much time, stress, and energy on being upset about it being political of being shocked it's political, and spending time figuring out why it is, how to change it, and when it's going to stop being political.
When you accept that it is political, you can just move on and do your work and do your job. You are better able to do your job because you're honest about what your job entails and the field you're in entails, and what it does not. And you don't waste time and energy being stuck in the sticker shock of your realization of what public health is.
Listen, I get it, you went into public health, maybe you even bought into this idea of public health that isn't politics. It's still helping the community, but it's not politics. It's still helping the community, but it's not elected officials. And now, the pandemic has brought up the truth that no, it is political, and you're kind of shocked of the price of public health. The price of the politics of public health.
Because you weren't specifically going into health policy because you didn't want to be in politics. But all of public health is policy, and all policy is public health. All of public health is political, and all of politics are public health because it affects the health and wellbeing of our communities, of our population. And you need to be honest and real with yourself about that truth.
If you decide after accepting that public health will always be political that you don't want to be in public health anymore because of that, that is okay, a hundred, thousand, million percent okay. It's okay if you didn't realize that before that public health is politics and political. And when you come to accept it, and it will always be that way that you decide it's not for you, that's totally fine. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Part of the problem in public health is we have so many people in the field who are denying it's political, who are avoiding the politics of it, and that limits the traction you can make. It's not a blame on you individually, right? We are in school certainly not prepared for it and not talked about it in that way.
Public health as a field wants to be the good guys and let the elected officials be the bad guys who hash it out. But the truth is, they're intrinsically intertwined. When we as a field or individually are not honest that public health is politics and don't teach the tools and don't think about the tools needed to advance public health in policy and politics, we are doing our field and ourselves as a workforce a disservice.
So, if you decide that the politics within public health are not for you, that's okay. We need people in public health who accept that and take it on. And if you decide that's not for you, that's also better for you. So, you can dedicate your time and passion of helping the community in a different way that is less political or not political and that will serve you and the community. There's no dishonor in that.
We've seen people leave the field. We've seen people resign, some because of burnout, many because they don't want to deal with the politics, and that's okay. But don't leave public health because it's become political. Leave public health if you want to because you see and finally accept it is and always will be political. You are deciding on purpose whether or not that's for you.
And if you're going to stay in public health, you need to accept that it's political. Because once you accept it, you can expect it in your professional work, you can plan for it. In your personal life, you don't have to be upset about it as much. Accepting it, this is so important, does not mean condoning it.
We conflate these two things so much as humans. Accepting that people will be upset over mask mandates, for example, doesn't mean you condone them making death threats against the school board. It means you accept no, and expect that when mask mandates go out or any public health policy for guidance, people will be upset. There will be people who disagree, who voice their opinions, who don't follow the recommendations.
When you accept that's a fact in public health then, you can clearly separate what is expected and from what is tolerated. In a professional setting, you can go into announcing the mask mandate expecting that some people are going to disagree, voice their opinions, not follow it, and then plan for and decide what's not tolerated. Decide that threats and violence are not tolerated and put in measures to deal with it if it occurs.
In a personal setting, you can go into a dinner expecting some other people to bring up the mask mandate and voice their disapproval, and then you can decide what's tolerated for you. Not where you have to go on a rant with these people, but decide do you want to talk about it? Will you walk away when it's brought up? Will you listen? Will you be curious about their opinion? Will you voice your opinion, whatever?
When you don't accept ahead of time that premise that public health is political, you waste so much energy each time you see the political nature of public health in action. Which has been a lot more in the pandemic, which is why I think so many people are taken back and shocked by it. But it's like that when you start noticing it and accepting public health's political, you'll see it everywhere, pandemic or not.
Whether in the news, your office, or at home, accepting it means allowing other people to have their thoughts, opinions, and beliefs. You cannot control other people's behaviors and accepting it doesn't. It means you know and admit and are honest. You can't control their behaviors and beliefs. You accept that, and you know disagreement and different opinions will happen.
For some of you, the outcome of accepting public health is political might light a fire under you in a really exciting way to embody that into your career fully. Whether to be more bold in your work, to advocate more, to organize more, to engage with more elected officials, or even run for office. We need more people with public health backgrounds, training, and experience in positions of political power. We need more public health folks in elected official seats at all levels of government.
Not public health infiltrating politics and government; public health is politics and government. We need to be more represented in that. So, the decisions being made about the safety and health of our communities are being made by people who actually care about communities and understand what's needed to protect our communities. The first step of making that happen is for everyone in the field to accept that public health is political and talk about it and plan for it and expect it.
Now, I want to be clear it doesn't mean everyone who works in public health has to run for office, right? Or has to get on more of that side of the work, no, no, no, I'm not saying that. For some of you, you might decide you want to do that, and this might help you, and that is amazing, and I support that, and I'm excited. But, it doesn't mean everyone has to.
As a field, we do have to accept this because the more we accept public health will always be political, the more we can plan for it. The more we can adapt for it. And the better our work gets, the better our strategies become, the better our prevention measures are; the hard truth is public health will always be political because the premise of the field is to help people; prevent illness, protect against harm, and everyone has a different opinion of what causes harm, of what is an illness, of what help is warranted, of who should get the help, and why.
Spending so much of your mental and emotional energy, unless you're a theorist or a researcher working specifically on this topic, spending so much of your energy decoding and untangling why public health is political and how can it not be political is just going to drain you and burn you out, and is so, no useful.
It's going to prevent you from doing your job and prevent you from living, loving life, and your job and seeing the value in your work and getting the joy out of it. I think that's why for so many of us when we're in grad school, we're so hyped on helping communities. Then, we get in the field, and we're so kind of shocked about how difficult it is and the challenges and the political nature of it.
If you accept it as political, then you could stop focusing on the negatives on that and start focusing on the benefits, on the opportunities, on how that could be used, on how that could be better planned for. Then, that joy and excitement and traction and all of that will revisit to the surface of your experience. Once you accept that public health is and always will be political, you can decide, do you want to be a part of it or not, knowing that truth?
And when you make that decision, you let go of so much unnecessary anger, frustration, resentment, and stress. Okay, y'all? So, I'm going to leave you with that for the week to ponder. Please share this episode with anyone in public health who you know is struggling with this topic or struggling with the pandemic in general so that they can get this insight and support to help them better navigate it. And lastly, the burnout recovery resolution mini-course opening February 7th.
Those of you who haven't heard me talk about it, it's a three-part mini-course 20 minutes episodes/videos you can watch over your lunch break. One on how to deal with the impact of COVID, right? How do you process everything that's been going on? One on how to deal with leaders and our supervisors who aren't helping. And the third is how to deal with your high workload, how to manage it, not just that, but reduce it.
And I promise you everything I'm sharing these 20-minute videos are concrete, simple, understandable, actionable things you can do. They are things you have not been taught in your MPH, things you have not been taught in your workplace on those panels you've been attending, not taught in the news giving you advice around social media. Watch it over your lunch break.
You can watch it after you take a rest after work, whatever it may be. I promise it's worth your time and help you destress, reduce your overwhelm, and get tools so you can continue to manage your stress and overwhelm, and make more space during this difficult time for rest, peace, calm, confidence, and feel more empowered through all of the turbulence and chaos we're in right now.
So, it's going live on February 7th. Sign up McKoolCoaching.com/courses, plural. We'll leave a link in the show notes with that. Thanks, everyone. Have a great week.
Are you ready to make a change? Whether that's learning to love your job, making a career move, or anything in between, I can help. I'd be honored to coach you through figuring out what's next and navigating the steps to get there. So, head on over to mckoolcoaching.com/consult that's mckoolcoaching.com/consult to set up a time to chat and talk about how you can achieve the career of your dreams.
Hi everyone, welcome back. This is a part two of a three-part series around the experience public health professionals are having currently during the pandemic two years in and with this current surge. Last week we talked about when you, the public health professional, gets COVID, and how you can be kinder to yourself, and how to deal with your brain.
This week we're going to be talking about the politics of public health. Next week we're going to be talking about how you can deal with those anti-vaxxers or anti-maskers or any anti-public health people you know. Let's jump right into it. Let's talk about the politics of public health.
So many of you all, I have heard from so many of you. I've gotten emails and questions about it, about how to deal with the politics of public health. How to deal with what's happening in the pandemic, and how folks are—public health is becoming politicized. COVID is becoming politicized, policies getting in the way and governments getting in the way, and politicians are getting in the way. We're divided, so that's getting in the way.
It's clear to me, MPH programs or whatever other program graduate school you went to did not prepare you for is the politics of public health. I remember when I was getting my MPH, my main interest was violence prevention. I guess it was like, seven years ago now, I was in the only injury and violence prevention class offered, like, remotely. And they had guest speakers from the CDC who came and talked about their work and gun violence.
I asked them, well, how do you deal with the fact that gun violence is such a heated, hot, political issue? And I was really left—I don't know what the right word is, but not necessarily disappointed, but like yearning for more with their answer. Essentially what they said is, well, we just have to wait until there's the right political window.
That's not necessarily like a wrong answer, right? In policy, that is what happens. You have to wait for the right person to get elected, or unfortunately, something happening you know in our communities or in our society or that the media brings up to like get that window in where there's momentum and interest and all of that. So, that is legit.
But it kind of left me being like, well, that's it? Right? Public health just waits on the sidelines? And even folks who are in health policy, there's not full preparation for dealing with the politics of public health. And in our MPH, we are surrounded by people who think like us in many ways, right? Most people who go get an MPH believe in science. They believe in prevention. They believe in health, right?
But, then we get out into the field, and we're doing this work, and there are so many people whether they're in our communities or they're in elected positions who don't believe in that, or believe very differently or hold different views or take different actions. And we are woefully underprepared for this.
And this pandemic and the level of politics that we have seen involved in public health in this response has been alarming and shocking to so many folks in public health. So, let's talk through this and how you navigate this. There's one main thing you need to do. By the end of this episode, my goal is for you to walk away having a deep understanding of this, and that is, in order to navigate this political nature of the pandemic, you have to accept that public health, no matter the topic, has always been and will always be political.
And I know it's not what you want to hear. But it's so important for you to hear. Just because your MPH program didn't prepare you for it, even if it was focused in health policy, doesn't mean it's not true. Public health has never truly been a bipartisan issue. It's never been not political. Reproductive health, abortion access, family planning, to name a few, have always been a political fight in America and across the world.
There are protests in nearly all abortion clinics in America at any given time. There are parents yelling at school board meetings about sex education being offered. Even basic healthcare rights and access and affordability have always been a fight. And now, even with the Affordable Care Act, we still have to fight to keep it and expand it.
There are lobbyists from private health insurance companies donating big bucks to political leaders to change it. There are businesses suing not to have to cover health insurance or certain types of coverage for their employees. And even topics in public health we think of as "bipartisan" and not political. What most people accept as neutral public health issues weren't always that way.
Smoking cigarettes was a huge political fight for decades to publish the research, to get money for the research, to implement smoking bans and policies, to put warning labels on things, even seat belts y'all. I saw someone post this when I think the vaccine mandates started happening. Of this person, it must have been in the 90s, who was on video saying that the new seat belt laws were impeding their freedom.
We're American, right? Even seatbelts which now most people see the benefit of and wear. That was very political during the implementation. The biggest reason you're struggling with the political nature of this pandemic is because you believe public health should not be political. So, you're resisting it being political.
You don't want it to be. You believe it shouldn't be, and this is what's causing you so much stress and suffering. It is not the fact that public health is political, or this pandemic is political. That's not what's causing you this stress. It's a fact that you are resisting that truth and not accepting that public health is political.
And you resist that truth because you don't have an answer for the why public health is political or why this public health topic is political. You believe if you knew the answer of why then you'd feel better. It would calm you. And then you and public health as a whole would know what to do about it, could fix it, could change people's minds.
Then, everyone would calm down, and it would all be fine. But that isn't true either. That's a false sense of potential security you're never going to achieve. So, we know why abortion access is political, for example. Some people hold a belief abortion is murder. Some people don't want women to be able to opt-out of motherhood. Some people believe it's against God's will and many other reasons.
We know most of those reasons why. Yet most of us in public health and especially those who work in reproductive health don't feel better just because we know all of the reasons why people are against abortion access. We don't have better solutions for making it nonpolitical. We don't have better strategies for changing those people's minds.
In fact, for most of us, and I'm speaking from lived experience here, it makes it harder and more frustrating to understand and know the reasons why people don't support abortion access or reproductive health access and do the work. And it makes it harder because we hold very opposite beliefs, and also we believe we need to change their mind to do our job.
And the same goes for a topic in public health you might even consider not political. Let's go with bullying, for example, right? Bullying on the surface appears to be a nonpolitical topic. It's a public health topic that really started to pick up traction at the right political moment, you could say. We don't see protests about anti-bullying campaigns currently. The news doesn't cover people upset at federal funding going to this initiative.
But it is political; why is that? Because there are people out there who don't believe public health should spend money on it. There are people who don't want their kids participating in those programs. There are people who believe being bullied a little bit is important for character building. Right?
Here's part of the underlying issue here, we associate the word political to mean bad. Something being political we believe is controversial, which we believe is bad. And that's part of the reason we react so strongly when we think public health issues have become political or are political, right? Because we don't think public health is bad.
We don't want to be viewed as bad or controversial. So, of course, public health can't be political. But public health issues are not political because they are inherently controversial or bad. They are political because they are intrinsically intertwined and have to do with government policy. They're political because they are tied to government funding and programs and guidance and practice.
They're political because they have to deal with government management, support, and response to community issues and needs. All of public health is political, and all public health issues are and will continue to be political issues. The politics of public health don't need to be solved. Meaning we don't need to figure out how to make COVID or any other public health topic not political.
We don't have to solve for that and turn it into a nonpolitical issue. They simply are political and always will be political. You need to accept that public health itself is a field, and all the work within it is political. Stop wasting so much time, stress, and energy on being upset about it being political of being shocked it's political, and spending time figuring out why it is, how to change it, and when it's going to stop being political.
When you accept that it is political, you can just move on and do your work and do your job. You are better able to do your job because you're honest about what your job entails and the field you're in entails, and what it does not. And you don't waste time and energy being stuck in the sticker shock of your realization of what public health is.
Listen, I get it, you went into public health, maybe you even bought into this idea of public health that isn't politics. It's still helping the community, but it's not politics. It's still helping the community, but it's not elected officials. And now, the pandemic has brought up the truth that no, it is political, and you're kind of shocked of the price of public health. The price of the politics of public health.
Because you weren't specifically going into health policy because you didn't want to be in politics. But all of public health is policy, and all policy is public health. All of public health is political, and all of politics are public health because it affects the health and wellbeing of our communities, of our population. And you need to be honest and real with yourself about that truth.
If you decide after accepting that public health will always be political that you don't want to be in public health anymore because of that, that is okay, a hundred, thousand, million percent okay. It's okay if you didn't realize that before that public health is politics and political. And when you come to accept it, and it will always be that way that you decide it's not for you, that's totally fine. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Part of the problem in public health is we have so many people in the field who are denying it's political, who are avoiding the politics of it, and that limits the traction you can make. It's not a blame on you individually, right? We are in school certainly not prepared for it and not talked about it in that way.
Public health as a field wants to be the good guys and let the elected officials be the bad guys who hash it out. But the truth is, they're intrinsically intertwined. When we as a field or individually are not honest that public health is politics and don't teach the tools and don't think about the tools needed to advance public health in policy and politics, we are doing our field and ourselves as a workforce a disservice.
So, if you decide that the politics within public health are not for you, that's okay. We need people in public health who accept that and take it on. And if you decide that's not for you, that's also better for you. So, you can dedicate your time and passion of helping the community in a different way that is less political or not political and that will serve you and the community. There's no dishonor in that.
We've seen people leave the field. We've seen people resign, some because of burnout, many because they don't want to deal with the politics, and that's okay. But don't leave public health because it's become political. Leave public health if you want to because you see and finally accept it is and always will be political. You are deciding on purpose whether or not that's for you.
And if you're going to stay in public health, you need to accept that it's political. Because once you accept it, you can expect it in your professional work, you can plan for it. In your personal life, you don't have to be upset about it as much. Accepting it, this is so important, does not mean condoning it.
We conflate these two things so much as humans. Accepting that people will be upset over mask mandates, for example, doesn't mean you condone them making death threats against the school board. It means you accept no, and expect that when mask mandates go out or any public health policy for guidance, people will be upset. There will be people who disagree, who voice their opinions, who don't follow the recommendations.
When you accept that's a fact in public health then, you can clearly separate what is expected and from what is tolerated. In a professional setting, you can go into announcing the mask mandate expecting that some people are going to disagree, voice their opinions, not follow it, and then plan for and decide what's not tolerated. Decide that threats and violence are not tolerated and put in measures to deal with it if it occurs.
In a personal setting, you can go into a dinner expecting some other people to bring up the mask mandate and voice their disapproval, and then you can decide what's tolerated for you. Not where you have to go on a rant with these people, but decide do you want to talk about it? Will you walk away when it's brought up? Will you listen? Will you be curious about their opinion? Will you voice your opinion, whatever?
When you don't accept ahead of time that premise that public health is political, you waste so much energy each time you see the political nature of public health in action. Which has been a lot more in the pandemic, which is why I think so many people are taken back and shocked by it. But it's like that when you start noticing it and accepting public health's political, you'll see it everywhere, pandemic or not.
Whether in the news, your office, or at home, accepting it means allowing other people to have their thoughts, opinions, and beliefs. You cannot control other people's behaviors and accepting it doesn't. It means you know and admit and are honest. You can't control their behaviors and beliefs. You accept that, and you know disagreement and different opinions will happen.
For some of you, the outcome of accepting public health is political might light a fire under you in a really exciting way to embody that into your career fully. Whether to be more bold in your work, to advocate more, to organize more, to engage with more elected officials, or even run for office. We need more people with public health backgrounds, training, and experience in positions of political power. We need more public health folks in elected official seats at all levels of government.
Not public health infiltrating politics and government; public health is politics and government. We need to be more represented in that. So, the decisions being made about the safety and health of our communities are being made by people who actually care about communities and understand what's needed to protect our communities. The first step of making that happen is for everyone in the field to accept that public health is political and talk about it and plan for it and expect it.
Now, I want to be clear it doesn't mean everyone who works in public health has to run for office, right? Or has to get on more of that side of the work, no, no, no, I'm not saying that. For some of you, you might decide you want to do that, and this might help you, and that is amazing, and I support that, and I'm excited. But, it doesn't mean everyone has to.
As a field, we do have to accept this because the more we accept public health will always be political, the more we can plan for it. The more we can adapt for it. And the better our work gets, the better our strategies become, the better our prevention measures are; the hard truth is public health will always be political because the premise of the field is to help people; prevent illness, protect against harm, and everyone has a different opinion of what causes harm, of what is an illness, of what help is warranted, of who should get the help, and why.
Spending so much of your mental and emotional energy, unless you're a theorist or a researcher working specifically on this topic, spending so much of your energy decoding and untangling why public health is political and how can it not be political is just going to drain you and burn you out, and is so, no useful.
It's going to prevent you from doing your job and prevent you from living, loving life, and your job and seeing the value in your work and getting the joy out of it. I think that's why for so many of us when we're in grad school, we're so hyped on helping communities. Then, we get in the field, and we're so kind of shocked about how difficult it is and the challenges and the political nature of it.
If you accept it as political, then you could stop focusing on the negatives on that and start focusing on the benefits, on the opportunities, on how that could be used, on how that could be better planned for. Then, that joy and excitement and traction and all of that will revisit to the surface of your experience. Once you accept that public health is and always will be political, you can decide, do you want to be a part of it or not, knowing that truth?
And when you make that decision, you let go of so much unnecessary anger, frustration, resentment, and stress. Okay, y'all? So, I'm going to leave you with that for the week to ponder. Please share this episode with anyone in public health who you know is struggling with this topic or struggling with the pandemic in general so that they can get this insight and support to help them better navigate it. And lastly, the burnout recovery resolution mini-course opening February 7th.
Those of you who haven't heard me talk about it, it's a three-part mini-course 20 minutes episodes/videos you can watch over your lunch break. One on how to deal with the impact of COVID, right? How do you process everything that's been going on? One on how to deal with leaders and our supervisors who aren't helping. And the third is how to deal with your high workload, how to manage it, not just that, but reduce it.
And I promise you everything I'm sharing these 20-minute videos are concrete, simple, understandable, actionable things you can do. They are things you have not been taught in your MPH, things you have not been taught in your workplace on those panels you've been attending, not taught in the news giving you advice around social media. Watch it over your lunch break.
You can watch it after you take a rest after work, whatever it may be. I promise it's worth your time and help you destress, reduce your overwhelm, and get tools so you can continue to manage your stress and overwhelm, and make more space during this difficult time for rest, peace, calm, confidence, and feel more empowered through all of the turbulence and chaos we're in right now.
So, it's going live on February 7th. Sign up McKoolCoaching.com/courses, plural. We'll leave a link in the show notes with that. Thanks, everyone. Have a great week.
Are you ready to make a change? Whether that's learning to love your job, making a career move, or anything in between, I can help. I'd be honored to coach you through figuring out what's next and navigating the steps to get there. So, head on over to mckoolcoaching.com/consult that's mckoolcoaching.com/consult to set up a time to chat and talk about how you can achieve the career of your dreams.
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