By: The Capella University Editorial Team with Buddy Wiltcher, EdD, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, Interim Dean of the School of Nursing and Health Sciences
Reading Time: 12 minutes
The hardest part of choosing a health sciences career path to pursue is figuring out which one best maps to the work you want to do. The field is broad, and the path from program to role looks different at every level.
Health science careers run from operational roles inside hospitals to community-facing public health programs. A bachelor’s degree that prepares you for administration sits in the same health science category as a doctorate that prepares you for senior public health work. They share a field. They lead to different work.
Explore what health science careers actually look like and how to tell which degree provides the skills that fit where you want to go.
Ready to learn more? Explore Capella’s online health science degree options.
Healthcare organizations are facing a range of new challenges, and several key trends are reshaping how professionals collaborate and work with patients.
Several major trends are helping drive this shift:
These changes mean healthcare professionals need to be more adaptable than ever before. That’s why durable skills like communication, coordination, critical thinking and analysis abilities are becoming increasingly important.
Health science is a broad field focused on how healthcare systems work and how outcomes can be improved across different settings. It includes a range of credentials at different levels, each one preparing you to take on different kinds of work.
Programs generally ground you in foundational areas like:
What separates one credential from another is the kind of work it prepares you for. Capella’s online health sciences programs include options at multiple levels.
However, career outcomes depend on many factors, including your interests, levels of work experience and licensure requirements, among others.
The pathways below show how these credentials map to different kinds of skills applicable in the field.
Patient support is one of the most visible health science pathways because it’s on the front line of patient care. It connects a range of coordination and wellness services, and the roles in this area are people-focused.
At its core, health science is all about helping patients navigate healthcare systems and access the services they need. However, there are a variety of health science roles that focus on patient support and coordination.
Day-to-day responsibilities may include helping patients schedule follow-up treatments and connecting individuals with preventative care initiatives focused on long-term wellness.
Just remember that some roles require additional licensure, certifications, graduate education or previous healthcare experience. So, make sure you conduct your own research if you’d like to pursue a career in this pathway.
Patient support and care coordination are core components of health and medical sciences. Many organizations rely on professionals who know how to help patients navigate services and coordinate care.
As a result, this pathway straddles a number of different employment settings:
These are just a few examples, but they should help serve as a general guide to inspire your search.
Not all health science careers involve direct patient treatment. Many professionals work behind the scenes to ensure that healthcare systems are operating effectively, and those roles and settings are worth exploring.
Organizations rely more on operational professionals the bigger they get. These are the people who make sure systems run efficiently and safely. Their roles usually focus on coordination, compliance and service delivery instead of direct patient care.
Day-to-day work across these roles will vary, but might include managing workflows and staff schedules or supporting compliance requirements. Some roles may also include planning and oversight focused on improving service delivery.
Again, bear in mind these roles are only examples designed to give you an idea of what’s out there. Different organizations may need different types of administrative and operational professionals with unique requirements.
Healthcare administrators may be needed across a variety of employment settings that require strong operational oversight and service management. Those environments inevitably vary by size and complexity, but health science graduates may choose to explore settings like:
These are just illustrative examples, so be sure to conduct your own research if this is a pathway you’re interested in pursuing.
Health sciences also place emphasis on disease prevention, outreach and population health. That’s why some graduates choose to pursue careers that focus on improving health outcomes at the community or population level.
Public health roles normally involve conducting research and planning to deliver programs designed to prevent illness and promote wellness. This taps into one of the key trends reshaping health science careers, and there is a wide range of potential roles to explore along this pathway.
Job titles in this area include:
These are only a few ideas to get you started. Some of these roles may require different certifications or a graduate-level education.
Day-to-day work across these roles will vary dramatically as well. It could include anything from organizing vaccination awareness campaigns and developing nutrition education programs to setting up a community wellness event aimed at helping smokers quit.
Public health professionals may work in any number of organizations focused on improving health outcomes at both local and population levels. Common employment settings that health science graduates choose to look into include:
As you can see, this is a broad list of examples. That’s because this career pathway straddles a number of settings, so it’s important to do your own research to find the exact role and setting you’d like to pursue.
As healthcare systems become more complicated and technology-driven, you may want to move into areas that require deeper expertise, such as leadership, data analytics or patient care coordination.
Specialization is also linked with increased responsibility. Several progression pathways enable you to pursue your passions and work in a more niche specialization.
As you can imagine, these specialist pathways generally require advanced education and degree study that focuses on a particular area. Likewise, advanced clinical roles may require additional licensure, certifications or graduate-level education depending on the field and employer expectations.
One of the core benefits of advanced study is that you’re able to gain supervised, hands-on experience practicing these new skills.
For example, Capella’s competency-based health science degrees are developed with input from healthcare industry partners to ensure learning reflects current healthcare environments and connects directly to applied, real-world contexts. Programs like our Master of Public Health even include practicums supervised by professionals in a community health setting to exercise your new advanced skills in a real-world context.
Regardless of the pathway you choose to pursue, health science degrees are designed to help you build a mix of technical understanding and durable skills that can be applied across any healthcare environment. The skills you’ll develop through higher education support both direct and indirect roles in healthcare, and generally include:
Many of these durable skills are highly applicable because they can be used in so many different contexts. For example, your health science career may require you to work within an interdisciplinary team to coordinate patient care or interpret healthcare information to guide service delivery.
Collaboration is a huge component of health sciences. That’s why Capella’s health science degrees are supported by Vila Health™, which is an interactive simulated healthcare environment designed to help you develop vital communication, collaboration, problem-solving and decision-making skills.
If you’re a working professional who wants to explore health science careers, your next step is to decide what study method will align with your lifestyle. It’s one thing to decide you’d like to get advanced training in public health, but it can be difficult balancing that study with care responsibilities and an existing job.
Online degree programs may offer the course structure and flexible study options you need to earn your degree and pursue your professional goals.
For example, Capella’s range of health science degrees offers multiple online learning formats. The self-paced FlexPath format, available in select programs including our Master of Health Administration, lets you move through coursework as you master each competency. Meanwhile, our GuidedPath format is available for all programs and uses more structured timelines with regular deadlines to keep you on track.
No matter which format you choose, all of Capella’s health science programs are centered around a competency-based curriculum so you can focus on applied learning that connects theory with practice. This includes bringing real-world experience into coursework through applied assignments that reflect healthcare scenarios and workplace challenges.
As an adult student looking to switch careers or build on your existing health science career, this combination of flexibility, structure and applied learning may provide the ideal pathway to continue your specialist education without having to press pause on the rest of your life.
Healthcare is continuing to evolve, creating demand for professionals who can navigate patient needs, health systems, public health challenges and organizational change. Because of that, health science pathways are becoming increasingly broad, with opportunities across patient support, healthcare administration, community health and leadership-focused environments.
A health science degree may help build the interdisciplinary knowledge and professional skills used across these settings, while also supporting future specialization or graduate study.
Capella offers a range of online health science programs designed for adult students exploring different healthcare pathways and educational goals. Before choosing a program, it’s important to evaluate how different degrees align with your long-term interests, preferred learning format and professional experience.
Looking for a new career in health? Discover Capella’s range of online health science degrees.
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