Case studies: Senior health promotion specialist: Paul Steinberg

Paul has a BA in English Literature from the University of Sheffield and an MA in Sexuality, Gender and Cultural Studies from the University of Sussex. He is currently completing a PhD in Cultural Theory and Gender at Birkbeck, University of London while also working as a senior health promotion specialist.

During my Masters, I volunteered for UNISEX, a sexual health, drug and alcohol health promotion project based at the University of Sussex. I was fortunate to have a scholarship for my MA which allowed me to devote around 10-15 hours per week training and working for the service. Following that, I won a graduate internship with the organisation, allowing to me attend further training in health promotion, while working as a volunteer co-ordinator and trainer.

I ran a number of one-off projects during that year and then worked at a drop-in advice centre for people living with HIV, before moving into journalism and becoming a health journalist at the BBC. Following that, I came to this post.

My role has developed to encompass wider aspects of the public health agenda - including more training for different groups and staff and more involvement in national strategy and policy. When the time is right, I’d like to move into national strategy and training around health promotion and public health for the government or a large charity. I am also keen to use my skills and work abroad, especially in relation to HIV and sexual health which is my specialism.

I like the fact that no one day is the same, and how it involves a broad range of skills. One day I can be training volunteers from a local grassroots community organisation about the basics of HIV; the next I can be at a government meeting sharing my views on the best way to move sexual health promotion forward for the new decade.

The NHS seems to be in a constant state of change and, as I’m still relatively new, it can be frustrating trying to get things done when there are so many layers of management and uncertainty about sign-off. It can also be frustrating trying to see instant results of your work; health promotion is about long-term outcomes which sometimes don’t appear straight away, and one can find oneself having to defend some projects because they don’t always produce immediate changes in local population statistics around health and wellbeing.

If you believe that prevention is better than cure, which most people do, there is no better job than health promotion and disease prevention. Also, you get to meet a range of people from all walks of life. You get to make new contacts from all sorts of places and organisations.

Health promotion is about working with communities to improve their knowledge, skills and abilities to take control of their own health and make choices which have a positive impact on their wellbeing. Experience of doing this can be as important - if not more so - than academic qualifications. It’s useful to have a postgraduate degree in a relevant area (especially to progress to a more senior level) but you can work in health promotion if you have good knowledge of the topic area, excellent communication skills and a willingness to attend personal development and training sessions.