When I decided to go back to school for a PhD focusing on the intersection of social media and health, many people asked me:
"What do you want to do when you finish?"
My stock answer to that next-to-impossible-to-answer question has been:
"Given the speed at which things are developing, there's a 50% chance that the job I'll have doesn't exist yet."
This usually satisfies (or mystifies?) the asker. And it's true - so much is happening right now, and there is so much out there that's worth being curious about. So as I am going about selecting classes, creating independent study opportunities, or just reading anything I can for self study purposes, I'm allowing myself to go down a number of paths without trying to pick that one thing. At least not yet.
And, as it turns out, my stock answer is actually true.
Behold the newly created position over at the ONC for a new consumer e-health position. They label it as a Policy Analyst, but I think that's largely because the current internal system doesn't quite have the categories to match.
Responsibilities include:
- Serve as the subject matter expert on consumer e-health.
- Forge alliances with consumer organizations, technology and care delivery innovators and consumer advocates to further the consumer e-health agenda.
- Develop consumer oriented strategies across the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).
- Serve as Project Officer providing project management oversight for contracts, including designing, developing and coordinating project management plans for policy initiatives in conjunction with the Division Director and the Office of Policy and Planning Director.
In other words, spend your days meeting amazing people advocating for change. I'm sure there's more wonky bits, but for me those would be interesting, too...
There will be some phenomenal candidates applying, I'm sure. I'd love to be one of them (and even fancy myself a decent candidate), but I'm committed to sticking this PhD thing out for now.
Still, how cool!
