Science in Emergency Response at CDC: Structure and Functions.

Recent high-profile activations of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Emergency Operations Center (EOC) include responses to the West African Ebola and Zika virus epidemics. Within the EOC, emergency responses are organized according to the Incident Management System, which provides a standardized structure and chain of command, regardless of whether the EOC activation occurs in response to an outbreak, natural disaster, or other type of public health emergency. By embedding key scientific roles, such as the associate director for science, and functions within a Scientific Response Section, the current CDC emergency response structure ensures that both urgent and important science issues receive needed attention. Key functions during emergency responses include internal coordination of scientific work, data management, information dissemination, and scientific publication. We describe a case example involving the ongoing Zika virus response that demonstrates how the scientific response structure can be used to rapidly produce high-quality science needed to answer urgent public health questions and guide policy. Within the context of emergency response, longer-term priorities at CDC include both streamlining administrative requirements and funding mechanisms for scientific research.

Structured Mentoring for Workforce Engagement and Professional Development in Public Health Settings.

Mentoring is commonly used to facilitate professional growth and workforce development in a variety of settings. Organizations can use mentoring to help achieve broader personnel goals including leadership development and succession planning. While mentorship can be incorporated into training programs in public health, there are other examples of structured mentoring, with time commitments ranging from minutes to months or longer. Based on a review of the literature in public health and aggregated personal subject matter expertise of existing programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we summarize selected mentoring models that vary primarily by time commitments and meeting frequency and identify specific work situations to which they may be applicable, primarily from the federal job experience point of view. We also suggest specific tasks that mentor-mentee pairs can undertake, including review of writing samples, practice interviews, and development of the mentee's social media presence. The mentor-mentee relationship should be viewed as a reciprocally beneficial one that can be a source of learning and personal growth for individuals at all levels of professional achievement and across the span of their careers.

Public health grand rounds at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: evaluation feedback from a broad community of learners.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the relevance and educational benefit of monthly Public Health Grand Rounds (GR), an hour-long interactive lecture series featuring 1 current, relevant public health topic. DESIGN: Quantitative and qualitative analysis of data evaluating GR format and content submitted by 2063 continuing education (CE) participants. SETTING: Survey data submitted electronically to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention online CE system from January 2010 through December 2011. PARTICIPANTS: Physicians, nurses, pharmacists, health education specialists, and other health care professionals seeking CE credits for Public Health GR. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Proportion of respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing that GR is using educational strategies that enhance user learning and is meeting preidentified learning objectives. RESULTS: On questions involving instructional strategies and delivery methods, 95.0% and 95.6% of respondents, respectively, agreed or strongly agreed that the GR was conducive to learning. More than 90% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they could describe the burden of the disease/condition in question and identify key preventive interventions, knowledge gaps, and measures of public health progress. CONCLUSIONS: These evaluation results indicate that the GR is meeting content-specific and educational needs of diverse health care professionals. The GR models organized scientific discussions on evidence and translation into real-world impacts of decreased morbidity, mortality, and health care costs, and links public health to clinical practice. This promotes a greater understanding of the interplay of different health fields and may lead to greater and cross-disciplinary collaborations.