BACKGROUND: The Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) is a 2-year training program of service and on-the-job learning for health professionals interested in careers in applied epidemiology. The goal of the EIS Program is to provide applied training while building national epidemiological capacity and addressing the growing need of the nation for rapid response to public health problems. Since 1951, over 3,200 EIS officers have responded to requests for epidemiologic assistance within the United States and throughout the world. EIS officers are on the public health frontlines, conducting epidemiologic investigations, research, and public health surveillance both nationally and internationally. During 2015, the EIS program refined several program operations to apply a more data-driven and transparent approach. This presentation will review the State of EIS in 2015, with an emphasis on what is new, and on current strategic directions
METHODS: In this presentation we will briefly present the current organization and strategic orientation of the program, including the mission and orientation of its current recruitment/selection, curriculum, and response teams. The talk will be given by the Chief of the EIS Program, who has a mandate to rapidly implement meaningful comments provided by the CSTE audience. We will take care to highlight both areas of new strategic direction as well as the mechanism by which we are safeguarding “tried and true” methods to help support State and Local epidemiologic capacity and response needs. Descriptive data from key EIS program metrics on application, selection, matching, response, and course evaluations are being analyzed and will be described.
RESULTS: The presentation will include trend data on EPI-AID responses; descriptive analyses that show in detail how decisions are made during the EIS selection processes; data on EIS Officer job placements after EIS; and data on the mapping of the EIS training curriculum to current CSTE applied epidemiology competencies.
CONCLUSIONS: The discussion will focus on current strengths and challenges of EIS in the areas of response effectiveness, recruitment and retention, and competency-based training. The orientation of the discussion will focus on further mapping State needs to current EIS Program activities. To the extent that time allows we will ask specific questions of the audience that seek to identify how EIS can further meet the needs of State and Local partners moving forward. We will also use this plenary to highlight the topics of two specific roundtable opportunities (if accepted) to provide more detailed feedback in small group discussions.