Public Health and General Preventive Medicine

The medical specialty of public health and general preventive medicine (PM) focuses on the promotion, protection, and maintenance of health and well-being, the prevention of disease and disability, and the premature death of individuals in defined populations (1).

What is a preventive medicine specialist?

PM physicians are experts in the following distinctive components of practice:

• Community medicine, community health, and global health – the practice or application of community-level interventions to improve health outcomes for the population of a city, county, state, or country;
• Population medicine, population health, and population health management – the practice or application of population-level interventions to improve health outcomes for the population cared for by a healthcare system or other organizations;
• Clinical preventive medicine, including lifestyle medicine and the delivery of clinical preventive services (i.e., screening, behavioral counseling, and chemoprophylaxis) – the practice or application of individual or group-level preventive interventions to improve the health outcomes of patients;
•  Core public health functions of assessment, policy development, and assurance;
• and the science of health promotion, health protection, and disease prevention (2).

Career paths for PM specialists can include working in public health departments, occupational and employee health clinics, lifestyle medicine practice, academic medicine, managed care, research, informatics, or policy development, just to name a few. These positions can be in local, state or federal health agencies, healthcare organizations, educational institutions, nonprofit health organizations, public health departments, industry, and all levels of government.

How to become a preventive medicine specialist?

Residency training for PM includes:

• a preliminary clinical year (i.e., internship or transitional year) (PY1) in a different specialty (such as but not limited to Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Ob/Gyn, Psychiatry, or General Surgery);
• 2 years of training (PY2 and PY3) in PM;
• and the completion of a Master of Public Health (MPH), Master of Science (MS), or another graduate degree (such as a Master of Business Administration or MBA), as long as the core courses required to sit for the PM board certification exam are completed, as required by the American Board of Preventive Medicine. The graduate degree and course requirements must be completed either prior to or (more often) as part of the PY2 and PY3 PM residency training years.

Many physicians complete residency training and work in another specialty but later find that they lack the necessary skills to manage and improve health outcomes for larger populations. Consequently, they often choose to complete PM residency training to gain the population-based public health skills and the clinical expertise in health promotion, health protection, and disease prevention that are the distinctive components of training in the PM specialty. However, completion of a prior residency in a different specialty is not a prerequisite to apply for or enter PM residency.

How much do preventive medicine specialists make?

According to the 2023 Physician Salary Compensation Report survey from Medscape, the average salary of a PM physician is $249,000. According to the 2012 Association of American Medical Colleges salary survey, the median compensation for an academic medicine position in preventive medicine ranges from $144,000 to $172,000 in early career to $232,000 to $250,000 in late career.

Sources

1. Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)
2. The Foci of Public Health and Preventive Medicine