Increasing demand for public health applied epidemiology fellowships

The CDC/CSTE Applied Epidemiology Fellowship Program has provided recent masters and doctorate graduates training and field experience in epidemiology at state and local public health agencies for 9 years. During that time, the program has seen a steady increase in demand. This presentation will review findings from an evaluation of the quantity and quality of applicants over the past 10 years.

Since 2003-2004, CSTE, in collaboration with CDC, has been enrolling new MPH (and similar) graduates in a two year fellowship designed to provide new professionals interested in careers in state applied epidemiology an opportunity to gain field based experience and mentoring from leaders in the field. Over the last 9 years, the program has seen the number of funded fellowship positions increase from 10 to close to 30 positions each year. Over this same period of time, the fellowship has seen a dramatic increase in applicants and in particular an increase in the number of high quality applicants making the selection process increasingly more challenging. This presentation will review the evaluation of the demand for this type of applied training program including increasing demand, quality of applicants, demand from host agencies, and quality of host site placements.

The CSTE evaluation examines the changes in the fellowship over the past 9 years, with the consideration of the macro-level environmental impacts that may also be informing these changes. The trend analysis and qualitative feedback can help public health educators understand the need, interest, and demand for applied programs.