Engaging Students at the Department of Health

Our mission is to work with others to protect and improve the health of all people in Washington.

Specifically, we work to:

• Ensure Public Safety – we protect Washingtonians from disease outbreaks, provide health care support during natural disasters, and ensure that the physical world that Washingtonians live in is safe and healthy.
• Create the Healthiest Next Generation – we support parents by providing newborn child screenings, ensuring strong infrastructure for our state's immunization program, and encouraging healthy foods and active living.
• Promote Healthy Living and Healthy Aging – we promote a lifetime of good health by leading statewide initiatives to address chronic disease, ensuring the safety and quality of Washington's health care providers, and developing data that allows communities to make good health choices.

Our ultimate vision is that people in Washington will enjoy longer and healthier lives because they live in healthy families and communities.

Check out these videos on our blog, Public Health Connection, to see examples of the work we do at the Department of Health.

People who work at DOH come with various types of academic backgrounds. These include public health, nursing, education, biology, environmental science, and many more. We also have staff who have completed graduate degrees, including MPHs, MSWs, MBAs, JDs, MDs, and PhDs.

Given the diversity and breadth of programs at DOH, we welcome and value staff from various disciplines. At DOH we value academic diversity and believe it strengthens our work as an agency.

These staff profiles demonstrate the diversity and breadth of our employees and the work they do at DOH.

Due to our involvement in the COVID-19 response, we are unable to fulfill any interview requests at this time. We look forward to being able to resume these requests once this public health emergency is over.

If you're interested in learning more about DOH, an informational interview (DOC) is a great place to start.

Please fill out our informational interview request form if you'd like to be placed with a staff member for an informational interview.

For information on internships, sign up to get an email when internships are available.

In addition to providing internship and informational interview opportunities, DOH works to foster strong academic partnerships across the state. The goals of developing stronger partnerships with academia are to:

• Develop a public health workforce and the next generation of public health professionals.
• Identify and prioritize areas for collaborative research.
• Support collaboration between DOH staff and academic partners by encouraging DOH staff to guest lecture and speak at academic institutions. If you are interested in having a subject matter expert or leader speak at your college or university, email our academic affairs director.
• Promote excellence in public health practice by advancing evidence-based and evidence-informed public health practice at DOH.

One way to learn about how public health works is to attend a public meeting. The Washington Open Public Meetings Act, requires that certain government agency meetings be open to the public. These meetings provide a great opportunity for you to see public health in action. These meetings focus on a variety of topics. Examples of topics covered at public meetings range from technical advisory committees on a specific health topic to reviewing agency rules related to standards of care.

Here are some links to public meetings you may be interested in:

• State Board of Health
• Opioid Response Workshop
• Vaccine Advisory Committee
• EMS and Trauma Systems
• Department of Health Rules Hearing Schedule
• Governor's Interagency Council on Health Disparities
• Local Boards of Health
• Boards, Commissions and Advisory Committees (BCC)

If you'd like your public meeting link included in this list please email us.