Epidemiologist

Job Description

Job 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.

Duties and 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 enProducts 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.