Ask Megan Resnick what she loves most about her work in public health and she’ll tell you it’s the ability to create positive change.
Since earning her Master of Public Health from UVM in 2016, she now works for OneCare Vermont, a statewide Accountable Care Organization, as a population health analyst.
Over the past few weeks alone, Resnick has visited St. Johnsbury, Brattleboro and Bennington to meet with primary care physicians, hospital staff and community organizations about enacting change.
“My day-to-day work is about taking vast amounts of health care data and distilling it down for communities, who can then make it actionable to enact positive change,” she says. “The cool thing about my role is that I serve the entire state of Vermont. I get to go out in the communities, find out where they think there are opportunities to improve public health and find data to support their needs.”
Such opportunities can work toward protecting people from secondhand smoke exposure, encouraging healthy food and beverage choices and creating more opportunities for physical activity in communities. It can also mean increasing the number of multi-disciplinary teams made up of physicians, pharmacists, and community health workers to help patients manage their chronic diseases.
“What excites me the most about public health is that the ultimate goal is to improve the health of the population of our community, but there are so many different ways to do it,” she says. “We’re looking at how to transform the health care system—how to broaden it, who can be involved and who can help coordinate care for patients. It’s challenging and innovative.”
UVM Master of Public Health Online Program
The UVM Master of Public Health is a 42-credit, online program developed in collaboration with the UVM Larner College of Medicine. With three college degrees under her belt from UVM—a B.S. in molecular genetics, an MBA and a master of public health—Resnick says the UVM public health online program prepared her well for her work as a population health analyst.
“The public health program at UVM exposed me to so many different methodologies and different subject matters,” Resnick says. “It’s an interesting way to get involved in helping shape the health of the community without having to go to medical school. It’s broader than that because it’s the vastness of how you can affect health—whether it be epidemiology, controlling disease outbreaks, changing the environment, or implementing policies.”
Resnick previously worked at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont and is currently an assistant professor in the nursing program at Norwich University. She joined OneCare Vermont in September 2017.
“I get to do the work, and also help teach it,” she says. “My favorite thing about my work is getting out into the communities and meeting with the people who have boots on the ground and are actively affecting changes. I love getting that perspective and not just having to sit behind a computer and look at numbers. It’s challenging and always changing, which makes it so much fun.”
