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Every once and a while, Anita Majerus of Freeborn County Public Health will get a phone call from someone asking to speak to “the public health nurse.”

“Well,” she says. “There’s 13 of us here.”

Public health is not always an avenue people think of when they consider nursing, she said. But it has the potential to be a great career opportunity.

Majerus is a registered nurse and public health nurse who has worked for Freeborn County for 33 years.

“Public Health focuses on the whole community, whole populations,” Majerus said. “The focus is on prevention. Some program areas see individual clients, but our focus is on population health.”

Nursing, Majerus said, was always something she considered pursuing as a career. She had family members who were nurses, she said, and that influenced her decision.

She attended Minnesota State University, Mankato and earned a four-year degree in nursing. She worked at Methodist Hospital in Rochester for a few years before taking a job at Freeborn County Public Health, where she has been ever since.

The decision to stay in the public health sphere, Majerus said, had a lot to do with the consistent and flexible hours.

She has not had to work nights, weekends or holidays, she said. This was especially helpful when her children were in school and made it possible to attend their various activities and school events.

However, the work is far from predictable, Majerus said. Her day could consist of sending letters to schools, attending meetings, checking the infant rooms at day cares or conducting vision and hearing screenings and much more.

“We do so much here at Public Health that the community isn’t aware of,” Majerus said. She added this includes visiting pregnant women for Family Home Visiting and WIC programs, car seat distribution and education, community education, health fairs throughout the county and directly observing clients being treated for certain communicable diseases.

“These are just a few of the things we do at Public Health,” she said.

Majerus said one of her favorite areas of her job is disease prevention and control. She said she learned certain technical skills in nursing school like giving immunizations and putting in an IV, but these skills are not typically used outside of the clinic or hospital setting. She said it is nice to be able to use those skills again while advocating for immunizations and other disease prevention methods.

Majerus is also heavily involved with emergency preparedness and response programs through Public Health. This includes opening shelters during severe weather events and other responsibilities.

“There just are so many opportunities,” Majerus said. A lot of people don’t go into public health right away, she said, but it’s a nice option to have down the road. “A lot of people think of a clinic or hospital nurse, which I loved that work when I did it my first two years, but there’s so many different pathways a person can take.”