CDC Hosting 67th EIS Conference This Week
The April 16-19 conference includes four special sessions on critical public health topics: the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh, the need for innovative use of big data in public health, the 1918 influenza centenary, and the U.S. opioid overdose epidemic.
CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) is hosting the 67th Annual EIS Conference in Atlanta this week, offering recaps about some of the investigations the unit's personnel have conducted in the past year. The April 16-19 conference includes four special sessions on critical public health topics: the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh, the need for innovative use of big data in public health, the 1918 influenza centenary, and the U.S. opioid overdose epidemic.
Another new feature on April 17 will see four EIS officers give a behind-the-scenes look at their investigations in a TED-style talk covering:
- Using geographic information systems to conduct a vaccination campaign in Somalia
- Tracking, testing, and building lab capacity for Legionella
- Preventing HIV and "the untold story of men who have sex with men in rural America"
- Discovering the inadequate nutritional value of food among incarcerated people during a foodborne outbreak investigation
On April 18, Surgeon General Dr. Jerome M. Adams, M.D., MPH, will give this year's Alexander D. Langmuir Lecture on "Better Health through Better Partnerships."
According to CDC, EIS is one of the world's premier public health fellowship in applied epidemiology. Each year, 60-80 new EIS officers are selected from among hundreds of physicians, doctoral-level scientists, veterinarians, and other health professionals who apply to the competitive fellowship program. During their two-year fellowship, EIS officers are on the front lines of public health; more than 3,600 EIS officers have responded to domestic and international health threats since 1951, and EIS alumni have gone on to become CDC directors; leading CDC scientists; acting surgeons general; WHO assistant directors general, regional directors, and country directors; public health and medical school faculty and deans; city health commissioners; and state epidemiologists.