Job

Epidemiologist 3 – Homebased - DOH6990 - Washington State Department of Health

Description:

This is a full-time, project Epidemiologist 3 position located within the Division of Disease Control & Health Statistics, in the Office of Public Health Outbreak Coordination, Informatics, and Surveillance (PHOCIS).  This project position is currently funded through July 31, 2024.

The Department of Health’s (DOH) mission is to work with others to protect and improve the health of all people in Washington State. This Epidemiologist 3 position, located in PHOCIS’s Surveillance Section, contributes to this mission by supporting the assessment and enhancement of public health surveillance through the expansion of syndromic surveillance and notifiable conditions reporting. These activities improve PHOCIS and DOH’s capacity to identify public health trends, conduct investigations, and to support program development for preventing, detecting, and controlling diseases and other priority public health topics in Washington state. This work is done to support DOH’s Rapid Health Information Network (RHINO) and supports the effective use of public health data and surveillance systems supported and utilized by DOH and LHJ epidemiologists.

This Epidemiologist 3 position compiles, maintains, analyzes, and disseminates rapid health data via Washington State’s Rapid Health Information Network (RHINO) program and provides RHINO-derived public health information and consultation to local health jurisdictions, DOH programs, and other public health partners. This position also provides advice and consultation to a wide range of health professionals at all levels regarding methods and approaches to conducting syndromic surveillance for a variety of communicable and non-communicable diseases and conditions. This position requires specialized knowledge of epidemiological methods associated with rapid health encounter data as well as knowledge in data processing and data integration.

This position will work under the supervision of an epidemiologist 3 supervisor. This position works collaboratively with DOH subject matter experts, Washington State’s local health jurisdictions, community partners, and other state and federal agencies. This position also supports public health emergency preparedness and response activities within the agency.

About the Office of Public Health Outbreak Coordination, Informatics, and Surveillance

The Office of Public Health Outbreak Coordination, Informatics, and Surveillance (PHOCIS) is responsible for performing cross-agency outbreak surveillance, informatics, and response coordination to combat disease transmission by protecting and improving the health of all people of Washington State. These responsibilities align directly to Goal 1 of the Agency Strategic Plan (2017-19 Update) which calls to “Protect everyone in Washington from communicable diseases and other health threats.” More specifically, this Goal’s Objective 1 call to “Ensure effective communicable disease prevention, surveillance and response systems,” and Objective 2 to “Prepare for, respond to, and recover from public health threats.”