Surveillance Epidemiologist
The surveillance epidemiologist will work on the National Outbreak Reporting System (NORS) Team. The team collects and analyzes reports of outbreaks of illness transmitted by food and by animal contact. The epidemiologist will communicate with the state health officials who submit reports, analyze data, manage IT projects, participate in meetings within and outside CDC, and contribute to scientific reports. The epidemiologist will work closely with people in state health departments and on other teams in the Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch (EDEB).
The main duties are the following:
- Analyze and interpret outbreak surveillance data for a variety of audiences through annual summary reports, scientific papers, abstracts, posters, meetings, oral and written presentations to scientific and nonscientific audiences, and calls with state and federal partners.
- Work collaboratively across teams within CDC and with state and federal partners.
- Generate and implement analytic ideas for the NORS Team based on review of current literature and team priorities, such as assessing trends in Salmonella outbreaks associated with particular foods.
- Work with NORS team members to update data dictionaries, data collection forms, guidance documents, and training documents as needed.
- Serve as a liaison between NORS Team and the IT team, which requires understanding the NORS platform and communicating priorities to stakeholders.
- Participate in informatics activities related to NORS (e.g., perform user acceptance testing (UAT); troubleshoot IT issues from state, local, and federal partners; work with the epidemiology team and the IT development team to prioritize and refine descriptions and criteria), and provide recommendations when needed.
- Serve as a NORS representative for the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity (ELC) grant, a CDC cooperative agreement that supports epidemiology and laboratory capacity for state and local health departments.
- Assist in developing and improving communication materials for public-facing websites.
- Additional tasks, as assigned by team or branch leadership.
Qualifications: The candidate should be an MPH graduate in the field of epidemiology who has excellent
communication skills and is a team player. The candidate should be familiar with and have experience using SAS (or another analytic tool), Access, and Excel. The position requires regular communication and interaction with state partners, so experience working with state systems and personnel would be useful but not essential. This position is an ORISE fellowship, so the candidate must have received a Master’s degree in the past five years and have at least 50% of classes in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
Organization Description: EDEB works with state and local health departments and other federal agencies to conduct surveillance for illness caused by bacterial enteric pathogens, including antimicrobial resistant pathogens, in the United States. EDEB staff members track illnesses caused by Clostridium botulinum, Campylobacter, Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli, Listeria, Salmonella, Shigella, Vibrio, and Yersinia. EDEB staff routinely collect and analyze surveillance data, present and publish, and collaborate with partners to improve the branch’s nine surveillance systems. EDEB is organized into five Teams: Analytics, Foodborne Disease Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet), National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS), National Surveillance, and NORS. The NORS Team collects approximately 900 foodborne and animal contact outbreak reports each year from throughout the United States and analyzes them to monitor disease trends and to better understand the sources of enteric infections. Analysis of outbreak reports can inform investigations the creation of prevention measures and policies by providing insight into the pathogens, foods and other sources, populations, and circumstances associated with foodborne disease and animal contact outbreaks.