Job Opportunity: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Leadership Position

Director for the National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)

Application Due: June 28, 2013 (before midnight ET)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is actively recruiting for the executive position of Director for the National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). The selectee will lead public health actions to promote health and safe environments and prevent harmful exposures and diseases related to toxic substances.

An MD, PhD or equivalent advanced degree is required. In addition, desirable candidates should possess broad, proven knowledge in the field of environmental health, proven managerial experience in public health administration, and the ability to advance the scientific and public health impact of NCEH/ATSDR.  

The incumbent will be physically located in CDC’s Atlanta Headquarters. For more information on NCEH and ATSDR, please click here.

To be considered, apply before midnight EST on June 28, 2013 at: Link 1 (MD's only) OR Link 2 (MD's, PhD's and equivalent.

Please see below for information on applying for this position. Questions regarding the application process may be directed to Vicki Hunter at vhunter@cdc.gov or 404.808.8321.

*Note: the salary indicated in the vacancy announcements is a recommended range. Final compensation determination is commensurate with qualifications and experience and may exceed the maximum salary rate identified.

Meaningful Use: Which PHIN VADS Value Set Should I Use?

As the guidance documents for the syndromic surveillance objective of Meaningful Use continue to change and improve, there is a constantly evolving set of value sets used and referenced. Many users are utilizing older versions of messaging guides and are unsure whether that provides the most up-to-date value set information.

To solve this problem, ISDS has identified a few hints to use when trying to dig through the various levels of the PHIN VADS value sets and vocabulary. PHIN VADS is CDC’s vocabulary access and distribution system that provides information on value sets and vocabulary for a variety of public health purposes, though this post focuses on syndromic surveillance.

First of all, the status of each value set (i.e., if it’s the most current version or not) is clearly depicted on the PHIN VADS website. For reference, consider the pictures inserted below. The first, referencing FacilityVisitType, shows the value set for Version 1, with a note “not current”. The second, also showing FacilityVisitType, shows the value set for Version 2 with a note “current”.

Looking forward, it may make sense to reference the most current available version when developing syndromic surveillance systems so that there is no need to backtrack later on. All of the items included in, for example, Version 2 of the observation identifier value set, are also included in Version 3. The updated versions add additional value sets and values so you will only be expanding, not diminishing, the capacity by using the most current value set. Release 1.9 of the PHIN Messaging Guide, now available at the CDC website, links up to the most updated versions of each of the value sets.

For additional questions, please contact Becky Zwickl at bzwickl@syndromic.org.

Written by ISDS Public Health Analyst, Becky Zwickl, MPH.

Public Health Informatics 2013 Virtual Event - Abstract Submission Deadline Extended to June 2nd!

Invitation to Participate in a Virtual Event

"Strengthening Public Health -- Health Care Collaboration"

July 16-18, 2013

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) along with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) invite you to participate in an upcoming Public Health Informatics virtual event "Strengthening Public Health--Health Care Collaboration" that will take place July 16-18, 2013. This virtual event provides a zero cost platform for public health partners to share and collaborate with partners all over the globe. Selected abstracts will be required to produce a video submission for their abstract for broadcasting during the virtual event. 

You may submit abstracts for the following tracks:

• Informatics Policy and Practice: virtual sessions will focus on national and international policy issues and their implications for public health informatics programs; applied informatics projects for programmatic support; and new initiatives.
• Research & Innovation: virtual sessions will focus on informatics research and technological innovation to public health and clinical settings.
• Supporting Public Health Evidence Base through Informatics Practice: virtual sessions will focus on strengthening public health through knowledge sharing, evaluation, and visualization and reporting. 

The Deadline for Abstract Submission is now June 2, 2013. Click here to complete the online Abstract Submission Form.

• Applicants are notified of the status of selection on June 7, 2013
• This event is completely virtual; attendees will participate in the session from the comfort of their own desks.
• If selected, the presentation must be pre-recorded with video and audio capabilities.
• This virtual event is free of charge and open to the public health community.

We look forward to receiving your submission for the virtual meeting taking place on July 16-18, 2013. 

For more information, please visit this website.

CDC Job Opportunity - Director, National Center for Health Statistics

PLEASE SHARE BROADLY WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES!

JOIN CDC’S LEADERSHIP TEAM!

  

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is actively recruiting for the executive position of Director for the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). As the nation’s principal health statistics agency, NCHS compiles statistical information and provides data to identify health issues that help guide public health and health policy decisions. The incumbent will report directly to the CDC Deputy Director for Surveillance, Epidemiology and Laboratory Services, and will serve as the agency’s senior advisor on all activities related to health statistics. The selectee will provide oversight and leadership in the design, development and operation of statistical and information systems for CDC, play an important leadership role in helping shape the nation’s health statistics system, and collaborate broadly across CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services and US government as a part of the network of Federal statistical agencies.

The incumbent will have broad operating authority for the executive planning, direction and management of NCHS. H/she will (a) lead overall management planning sessions in which program direction, feasibility of program changes, and allocation of funds are considered, (b) evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of program operations in relation to objectives and strategies in relation to legislative, budgetary and program planning, and (c) collaborate with other top agency management officials on the development and implementation of long range plans and assessments of their budget impact. H/she will be responsible for overseeing the development and maintenance of quality scientific and technical competence in NCHS and for assuring that actions and programs reflect scientific integrity and operational effectiveness.  H/she will serve as spokesperson for CDC on matters related to NCHS' mission. 

NCHS has an annual operating budget of approximately $212 million and a workforce of more than 600 full-time employees and contractors in two locations – Hyattsville, Maryland and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The incumbent will be physically located in the Hyattsville office and will be expected to travel to CDC’s Atlanta Headquarters as well as other domestic and international locations. For information on NCHS, visit www.cdc.gov/nchs.

To be considered, apply before midnight EST on June 7, 2013 at:

https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/342020000?share=email  or

 https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/342191800?share=email

Please note: Degree requirements are MD, PhD or equivalent advanced degree in a field relevant to the duties of the position.

Questions regarding the application process may be directed to Vicki Hunter at vhunter@cdc.gov or 404.808.8321.

New PHII Course: Registration Open

The Public Health Informatics Institute (PHII) is announcing its first ever distance-based course. In partnership with UNC Chapel Hill, PHII's Informatics Academy will be delivering a blended approach course in public health informatics entitled "Designing and Managing Public Health Information Systems: 8 Steps to Success." The target audience for this course is mid-level career public health practitioners. PHII specifically seeks teams of 3 people from a health department that are working on an informatics project.

The course will enable participants to: 

• Provide strategic guidance to your technical teams
• Effectively communicate your health information system needs
• Improve processes within your agency for better automation
• Develop valuable skills for career opportunities in public health informatics

This course will take place over 8 weeks and will be delivered as an instructor-supported distance learning course with interactive webinars, a self-paced eLearning module, and supporting materials and review activities. 

Course Dates: June 16th - August 9th, 2013

Registration Deadline: Friday, June 7th

View the course flyer

To register or request more information, please contact informatics.academy@phii.org.

April Literature Review: Data Visualizations

ISDS’s Research Committee hosted another great Literature Review this month!

The ISDS Literature Review calls take place bi-monthly and are an opportunity to discuss journal articles related to biosurveillance. Recently, the Research Committee decided that, in order to generate more focused discussion, the Literature Review calls would be centered around topics of interest to the community. These topics are decided on by the Research Committee about two months prior to a Literature Review. The group’s Zotero library is then searched for keywords relating to the topic. Finally, these articles are sent to the Research Committee. This month the Literature Review was focused on data visualization.

Call Highlights:

Three articles were summarized and discussed on the April Literature Review Call:

• Chui KKH, Wenger JB, Cohen SA, Naumova EN. Visual Analytics for Epidemiologists: Understanding the Interactions Between Age, Time, and Disease with Multi-Panel Graphs. PLoS ONE. 2011;6(2):e14683. In this article, the authors propose the use of a visual analytics tool called multi-panel graphs to facilitate the interaction among age, temporal trends and disease. The authors provide examples of using this technique for influenza, salmonella, and asthma from CMS, Massachusetts DPH and the Children’s hospital of Wisconsin.

While, the call participants found this to be an interesting presentation of data, there was interest in assessing reactions among public health practitioners (i.e., ‘Would practioners find this visualization useful?’).

• Hafen RP, Anderson DE, Cleveland WS, et al. Syndromic surveillance: STL for modeling, visualizing, and monitoring disease counts. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making. 2009;9(1):21. Here the authors present a statistical outbreak detection method along with visualizations of data decomposition introducing a method they call STL, for “seasonal-trend decomposition procedure based on loess smoothing.” The authors compared the STL-derived detector to EARS methods C1, C2, and C3 and to a regression detector based on general linear modeling (GLM) for small, medium, and large-scale Emergency Department (ED) time series for detection of artificial lognormal signals at 3 levels. The STL method outperformed the EARS methods for in each situation. It outperformed the GLM method significantly for the smaller signals and slightly for the larger ones.

Again, there was general interest in this method from a theoretical viewpoint, but the question of practical utility to public health practitioners was raised. Essentially, would practitioner be interested in this standardized technique? If so, it may be worth developing into a standardized tool.

• Ji X, Chun S, Geller J. Epidemic Outbreak and Spread Detection System Based on Twitter Data. In: He J, Liu X, Krupinski E, Xu G, eds. Health Information Science.Vol 7231. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg; 2012:152–163. This study discusses the design and utility of the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Epidemics Outbreak and Spread Detection System (EOSDS). EOSDS utilizes publicly available information from Twitter to generate three different visualizations of the space and time dimensions of a spreading epidemic: static map, distribution map, and filter map. As an example of the utility of this system they considered a time period during which there was a severe outbreak of listeria in North America and compared the EOSDS visualizations (collecting a test dataset by specifying the keyword “listeria,” and monitoring the period from “09-26-2011” to “09-28-2011”) and CDC official reports – a gold standard. They reported that all three visualizations showed good correlation with CDC reports and concluded that EOSDS may be used as an effective early warning system.

While there is still debate about the utility of social media for disease surveillance, the study proposed geocoding and visualization methods that may provide information on health events prior to official reports. To see this system in action, visit the EOSDS website.

To view the full article summaries, please visit the ISDS April 2013 Summaries Wiki.

You may also review the Literature Review archives here.

Written by ISDS Program Manager, Tera Reynolds.

Job Opportunity: Senior Healthcare Data Analyst (“Epidemiologist II”)

Massachusetts Department of Public Health

Center for Birth Defects Research and Prevention

Application Deadline: May 1, 2013
Detailed Job Posting

Overview

The Senior Healthcare Data Analyst will support a 3-year, multi-state collaborative CDC-funded grant developing a surveillance system for adolescents and adults with Congenital Heart Defects (CHDs). S/he will be responsible for cleaning, managing, analyzing, interpreting, and reporting of large analytic files from routinely-collected administrative datasets available in Massachusetts, including the All-Payer Claims Database, Vital Records, and Pregnancy to Early Life Longitudinal Data System (PELL), as well as some outside data sets. Most of the data will have to be linked and de-duplicated.

Some new data collection tools will need to be developed by the Senior Analyst, with input from others, to obtain primary retrospective and prospective data from health care providers. The Senior Analyst will make sure that all data-related grant requirements will be met in a timely and responsive fashion. S/he will further assist in disseminating results to develop and improve public health surveillance of individuals with CHDs.

Qualifications 

The ideal candidate will:

• Develop, improve, and evaluate the new public health surveillance system based on grant specifications and requirements.
• Conduct both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses on the data gathered.
• Document datasets, program code, and related materials to ensure reproducibility of work, including an audit trail for programming.
• Interpret, report, present and publish results of analyses.
• Provide leadership to assist program staff to frame questions and hypotheses suitable for investigation within the grant collaborative.
• Investigate validity and reliability of the data collected.
• Participate in planning and collection of additional data as needed.
• Assist in the preparation and conduct of cost analyses, as deemed feasible.
• Determine appropriate statistical tests.

Preferably the applicant will have a master’s degree in epidemiology, biostatistics, or related field. The ideal candidate will have excellent knowledge of SAS, including macros and SQL. Applicants must have experience working with large administrative datasets, linking data sets, de-duplication of data points, experience with database development, extraction of data from large data sources, creation of analytic databases, as well as experience conducting statistical analyses, including univariate, bivariate and multivariate analyses. Excellent oral and written communication and organizational skills, and attention to detail, are a must for this position.

Please direct any questions at Gerlinde Munshi, Center for Birth Defects Research and Prevention: gerlinde.munshi@state.ma.us or 617-624-5507; www.mass.gov/dph/birthdefects. 

The Department of Public Health is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer