<p>While you should certainly transfer into the MS in epi if you want (and it may be beneficial if you have the inclination), you don’t need to - just make sure that you take as many epi classes as you can from here on out. You will need the quant preparation, but I know a lot of students who switched tracks after their MPH, including a friend who had a chemistry undergrad, did her MPH in health behavior and did her DrPH in biostatistics.</p>
<p>If you want to be a researcher, you need either the PhD (or an equivalent degree like the Sc.D offered at JHU) or a DrPH. You don’t necessarily need an MD/PhD; some students choose it because they want to keep the option of clinical medicine open, and others choose it because they are doing truly interdisciplinary, clinical research that requires or strongly recommends access to patients. If you’re interested in the general types of epidemiological research most epidemiologists do, you won’t need the MD - most epidemiologists don’t have it. You could also potentially just get an MD and use your MD and MPH to be a researcher. It really just depends on your preferences and how much flexibility you want in your future career. Lots of MDs practice medicine for some years and then switch to epidemiology. The thing to remember, though, is that you’ll have to borrow to pay for an MD, whereas a PhD is usually funded.</p>
<p>Whether to choose a DrPH or a PhD depends on your desires. At some schools (like mine, Columbia) a DrPH and a PhD are very similar. Here, a DrPH is a research degree much like a PhD - the only difference in my department is that DrPHs are tailored for folks who already have an MPH and are therefore a little bit shorter. Here, the DrPH students are somewhat indistinguishable from the PhD students - we take the same classes and do the same kind of research, and their dissertations look like ours.</p>
<p>However, at other schools (Johns Hopkins, for example) the DrPH is more treated like a professional doctorate. Not only are you required to have an MPH, but they require some full-time experience (which you have). The idea is to teach you to be a professional leader in the world of public health. While you will do research and complete a dissertation, the work will be much more applied than in a PhD program. And DrPH students at these schools are expected to go onto work in public health organizations as leaders and managers, not necessarily as professors and researchers - although many people with DrPHs DO go on to be professors and researchers in public health.</p>
<p>The difference is also reflected in funding. At my own school, PhD students are better-funded than DrPH students, and I think this is a trend that is true at a lot of places. At some schools DrPH students pay for their education just like MPH students do. PhD students are also eligible for more kinds of external funding than DrPH students. For example, while DrPH students are eligible for the NIH predoctoral fellowship (and other kinds of NIH funding for doctoral students), they’re not eligible to apply for the NSF GRFP (or the Ford).</p>
<p>My personal advice? If you want to be a researcher at an academic institution - a professor at a university school of public health, or at a medical school - or a researcher at a government agency, think tank, NGO, etc., go for the PhD in epidemiology. If you think you want to understand and use research to lead a public health institution - like working at the department of health for a large city or state system, or working as a field epidemiologist or a public health officer for the Air Force - I still say the PhD is better because it’s more widely recognized, but the DrPH is suitable for those roles too. Generally speaking I think at this point in time the PhD gives you more flexibility, although it may be different in the next 10-15 years.</p>