Contract Epidemiologist – Expanded Nonfatal Overdose Surveillance Support (OD2A Grant)
Requirment: Must work in office 1 day a week.
Position Summary
The Tennessee Department of Health's Office of Informatics & Analytics (OIA) is seeking an Epidemiologist to support nonfatal overdose surveillance activities through the CDC's Overdose Data to Action in States (OD2A-S) grant. This position will focus on enhancing syndromic overdose surveillance through ESSENCE. The Epidemiologist will evaluate current overdose case definitions and propose new definitions for emerging substances.
Primary Responsibilities
Nonfatal Overdose Surveillance
- Develop expertise in the Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE) and support statewide nonfatal overdose surveillance.
- Collaborate with surveillance staff to develop and validate surveillance definitions for emerging substances, including medetomidine, vape shop products, cannabis, and other emerging drug classes.
- Collaborate with internal partners to support integration of ESSENCE data with REDCap and other surveillance systems.
- Train team members on ESSENCE workflows, surveillance definitions, and data management processes.
Surveillance Reporting and Data Visualization
- Develop and maintain standardized monthly overdose burden reports to support internal planning and decision-making.
- Evaluate available surveillance data sources to identify the most appropriate data for routine reporting.
- Design and maintain automated reporting tools to efficiently produce monthly trend reports.
- Perform quality assurance reviews to ensure data completeness, accuracy, and consistency prior to dissemination.
- Present surveillance findings and provide technical guidance on interpretation of overdose trends to internal stakeholders.
Preferred Qualifications
- Master's degree in Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Public Health, or a related field.
- Experience conducting epidemiologic analyses using large administrative or surveillance datasets.
- Experience with SAS, SQL, R, Tableau, or similar analytic and visualization software.
- Knowledge of public health surveillance systems, syndromic surveillance, or overdose surveillance is preferred.
- Experience with study design, data quality assessment, statistical analysis, and interpretation of public health data.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience preparing technical reports and presenting findings to diverse audiences.
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively within multidisciplinary teams and manage multiple projects simultaneously.
Desired Characteristics
The ideal candidate is a curious, collaborative, and detail-oriented epidemiologist who enjoys solving complex analytic problems and translating data into actionable public health information. They should be comfortable learning new surveillance systems, evaluating data quality, developing innovative surveillance products, and communicating findings to technical and non-technical audiences. A strong commitment to continuous learning, teamwork, and improving overdose prevention efforts is essential.
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