How We Serve
EIS officers protect the public’s health by serving CDC, other public health agencies and partners.
While working in their assignments and deployments, they
- Conduct or participate in field investigations
- Design, conduct, and interpret epidemiological analyses
- Evaluate public health surveillance systems
- Give public health talks about their work
- Give oral presentations to scientific audiences
- Write scientific manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals
- Write concise public health updates communicating timely information
- Write abstracts
- Communicate complex scientific concepts to lay audiences
EIS officers have responded to a multitude of major health threats since 1951, including
- Investigating biological warfare during the Korean war
- Participating in the worldwide smallpox eradication campaign in the 1960s and 1970s
- Discovering the microbes that cause Legionnaires’ disease, Lassa fever, and AIDS
- Investigating and responding to outbreaks and incidents related to Anthrax, SARS, and flu subtypes H1N1 and H5N1
- Providing disaster relief following Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Katrina, and 9/11
- Providing on-the-ground response to Ebola and Zika virus outbreaks.
- Active officers deploy more than 200 times in any given year to support field investigations for disease outbreaks and other public health threats within the U.S. and around the world.
- Approximately 85% of EIS graduates enter the public health workforce.
- Page last reviewed: April 30, 2018
- Page last updated: April 30, 2018
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