Top 12 Public Health Nurse Skills to Put on Your Resume
In today's crowded job market, standing out as a public health nurse takes a crisp blend of clinical know-how, data sense, and community savvy. The skills below are the ones hiring managers scan for first—practical, demonstrable, and tightly tied to outcomes. Highlight them with specifics, and your resume stops feeling generic and starts sounding indispensable.
Public Health Nurse Skills
- Epidemiology
- Immunization
- Health Education
- Community Outreach
- Patient Counseling
- Disease Surveillance
- Health Promotion
- Emergency Preparedness
- Biostatistics
- SAS (Statistical Analysis System)
- SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences)
- EHR (Electronic Health Records)
1. Epidemiology
Epidemiology examines how diseases and health events spread, who is affected, and why. In public health nursing, it means tracking patterns, spotting risks early, and acting fast with prevention and control strategies that actually move the needle for a community.
Why It's Important
Epidemiology powers evidence-based action—identifying threats, guiding interventions, and evaluating what works—so communities stay safer and healthier.
How to Improve Epidemiology Skills
Grow your epidemiology chops with a blend of learning, tools, and local insight:
Continuous education: Take short courses, journal clubs, and webinars focused on outbreak investigation, study design, and bias. Platforms like Coursera and edX offer solid tracks.
Use practical tools: Work with field-ready data tools (for example, Epi Info) and dashboards that make surveillance nimble and visual.
Deepen community engagement: Build trusted channels with community partners to surface issues early and validate signals from data with on-the-ground context.
Combine data fluency with community trust, and your surveillance tightens up fast.
How to Display Epidemiology Skills on Your Resume
2. Immunization
Immunization primes the immune system—usually through vaccines—to fend off specific infections and prevent outbreaks before they ignite.
Why It's Important
Vaccines save lives, protect vulnerable people, and cut costs by preventing disease instead of chasing it after the fact.
How to Improve Immunization Skills
To raise uptake and confidence:
Educate clearly: Share plain-language vaccine facts, benefits, schedules, and side-effect expectations. Address myths without amplifying them.
Reduce friction: Bring mobile or pop-up clinics to underserved areas. Offer extended hours and low-barrier scheduling.
Communicate broadly: Use local media, schools, and faith groups. Keep messages short, consistent, and repeated over time.
Partner with trusted voices: Work with community leaders and parent groups who can vouch for safety and necessity.
Set reminders and recalls: Texts, emails, and phone calls dramatically improve series completion.
How to Display Immunization Skills on Your Resume
3. Health Education
Health education equips people with knowledge and skills they can use—day to day—to prevent illness and manage conditions confidently.
Why It's Important
Well-designed education changes behavior, improves outcomes, and trims avoidable costs. For public health nurses, it’s a force multiplier.
How to Improve Health Education Skills
Make it practical, relevant, and sticky:
Go digital and interactive: Short videos, visuals, and quizzes reach more people and boost retention.
Be culturally smart: Tailor languages, examples, and imagery to the audience. Partner with the Office of Minority Health guidance for culturally competent care.
Use community channels: Schools, libraries, and community centers expand reach and trust.
Push prevention: Emphasize screenings, vaccines, and lifestyle habits aligned with Healthy People 2030 priorities.
Collect feedback: Quick surveys or post-session check-ins help refine content and approach.
How to Display Health Education Skills on Your Resume
4. Community Outreach
Community outreach means showing up—listening first, then co-creating programs that improve access, prevention, and continuity of care.
Why It's Important
Trust opens doors. Outreach reveals needs early, meets people where they live, and links them to services they might otherwise miss.
How to Improve Community Outreach Skills
Build momentum with deliberate steps:
Assess needs: Use listening sessions, brief surveys, and local data to set priorities that reflect real concerns.
Form durable partnerships: Collaborate with schools, mutual aid groups, libraries, and local nonprofits to widen reach.
Be present online and offline: Mix social media with flyers, radio, and community boards for broad coverage.
Create targeted programs: Design workshops and screenings that match local risks and barriers.
Bring care to people: Mobile clinics and home visits close gaps for those with transportation or mobility hurdles.
Evaluate and iterate: Track turnout, outcomes, and feedback; then adapt quickly.
How to Display Community Outreach Skills on Your Resume
5. Patient Counseling
Patient counseling blends education, motivational interviewing, and practical planning so people can manage conditions and make informed choices without feeling lost.
Why It's Important
Clear counseling drives adherence, reduces errors, and turns confusion into confidence—especially for complex regimens or new diagnoses.
How to Improve Patient Counseling Skills
Make every conversation count:
Use plain language: Ditch jargon. Confirm understanding with teach-back.
Stay current: Track evolving guidelines and advisories from trusted public health authorities.
Center the patient: Align plans with values, preferences, and constraints. Shared decisions stick better.
Leverage visuals: Handouts, diagrams, and pill calendars boost recall.
Follow up: A quick call or message can catch problems early and reinforce the plan.
How to Display Patient Counseling Skills on Your Resume
6. Disease Surveillance
Surveillance is continuous, structured tracking of health events. For nurses, that means timely reporting, strong data habits, and rapid coordination to contain spread.
Why It's Important
Early detection saves time, money, and lives. Robust systems guide targeted responses and smarter resource deployment.
How to Improve Disease Surveillance Skills
Strengthen the system end to end:
Elevate data quality: Standardize forms, train staff, and verify entries to reduce lag and error. Align with notifiable disease requirements.
Adopt useful tech: Integrate registries, ELR feeds, and simple dashboards for real-time visibility—even on mobile.
Engage the community: Train community health workers and use local networks to flag unusual clusters quickly.
Collaborate across sectors: Tie in labs, clinics, schools, environmental health, and animal health where relevant (One Health thinking).
Keep learning: Refresh skills on outbreak investigation, data privacy, and informatics as tools and pathogens change.
How to Display Disease Surveillance Skills on Your Resume
7. Health Promotion
Health promotion nudges environments, policies, and daily habits toward better outcomes—less risk, more thriving.
Why It's Important
It shifts focus from treatment to prevention, scaling impact across neighborhoods and generations.
How to Improve Health Promotion Skills
Make the healthy choice the easy choice:
Educate with purpose: Run workshops and fairs using clear, culturally relevant materials backed by current public health guidance.
Engage broadly: Work with schools, employers, and civic groups. Pair messages with incentives and repeat them often.
Advocate locally: Support policies for smoke-free spaces, safe parks, and access to fresh foods. Policy change magnifies individual efforts.
Empower communities: Co-design programs with residents. Shared ownership improves uptake and longevity.
Evaluate and refine: Track participation and outcomes; pivot quickly when something falls flat.
How to Display Health Promotion Skills on Your Resume
8. Emergency Preparedness
Emergency preparedness readies you and your team for crises—infectious disease surges, wildfires, floods, chemical events—so response is swift, coordinated, and humane.
Why It's Important
Prepared teams protect critical services, reduce chaos, and shorten recovery time when every minute matters.
How to Improve Emergency Preparedness Skills
Plan, practice, and tighten the loop:
Train regularly: Take courses on incident command, triage, and risk communication; refresh annually.
Stock smart: Maintain tailored go-kits and caches for likely local hazards; audit expiration dates.
Create communication trees: Establish redundant channels for staff and public updates, including low-tech backups.
Coordinate partners: Align with EMS, local health departments, emergency management, and community leaders.
Educate the public: Run preparedness workshops and push simple checklists people will actually use.
Drill it: Tabletop and full-scale exercises expose gaps you can fix before the real thing.
Debrief and improve: After-action reviews should translate into concrete updates—no shelfware plans.
How to Display Emergency Preparedness Skills on Your Resume
9. Biostatistics
Biostatistics turns raw health data into insight. You test hypotheses, estimate effects, and judge whether an intervention truly works.
Why It's Important
Without stats, it’s guesswork. With it, programs can be targeted, resources justified, and outcomes measured honestly.
How to Improve Biostatistics Skills
Build fluency step by step:
Learn progressively: Intro to stats; then regression, survival analysis, and study design. Courses on Coursera or edX can help.
Practice often: Use R or similar tools on real public health datasets until concepts feel second nature.
Study examples: Read applied public health research to see methods in the wild, not just in textbooks.
Join communities: Professional groups and forums surface tips, pitfalls, and code snippets you can reuse.
How to Display Biostatistics Skills on Your Resume
10. SAS (Statistical Analysis System)
SAS is a powerful suite for data management, analysis, and reporting—widely used in health agencies and large programs.
Why It's Important
Proficiency in SAS helps you handle large datasets, automate reports, and support decisions with clean, reproducible analytics.
How to Improve SAS (Statistical Analysis System) Skills
Level up with purposeful practice:
Nail the fundamentals: DATA steps, PROC SQL, PROC FREQ/MEANS/REG, and macros for automation.
Take focused courses: Look for public-health-oriented SAS training that uses realistic case studies.
Work on real datasets: Practice cleaning, merging, and analyzing surveillance or survey data. Try competitions or open data portals.
Engage in user communities: Ask questions, read solutions, and share snippets to accelerate learning.
Use accessible platforms: SAS OnDemand for Academics provides a no-cost environment for learning and practice.
How to Display SAS (Statistical Analysis System) Skills on Your Resume
11. SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences)
SPSS streamlines data cleaning, analysis, and visualization—especially for surveys and program evaluations common in public health.
Why It's Important
It enables quick, reliable analyses without heavy coding, helping teams interpret results and act faster.
How to Improve SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) Skills
Skill up with a practical arc:
- Master the basics: Variable types, data entry, labeling, and file management.
- Use built-in tutorials: Walk through guided analyses to learn workflows and outputs.
- Practice with real data: Analyze public health surveys or program metrics; interpret outputs with clarity.
- Take short courses: Focus on SPSS for health sciences and evaluation methods.
- Join user forums: Troubleshoot issues, learn shortcuts, and see sample syntax.
- Stay current: Update your software knowledge as features evolve.
How to Display SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) Skills on Your Resume
12. EHR (Electronic Health Records)
Electronic Health Records are digital charts that centralize patient information, streamline coordination, and reduce duplication.
Why It's Important
EHRs enable faster, safer decisions with fuller context—critical for tracking immunizations, managing chronic disease, and monitoring population trends.
How to Improve EHR (Electronic Health Records) Skills
Make the system work for care, not the other way around:
Push interoperability: Advocate for data-sharing workflows that connect clinics, hospitals, and public health.
Refine usability: Provide feedback to optimize templates, order sets, and alerts; cut clicks where possible.
Train continuously: Short refreshers and tip sheets help staff adopt updates and avoid workarounds.
Leverage decision support: Use evidence-based prompts and care pathways embedded in the EHR to standardize quality.
Guard privacy and security: Follow HIPAA and local policies; reinforce good data hygiene and access controls.
How to Display EHR (Electronic Health Records) Skills on Your Resume
