Field Epidemiologist

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) seeks an experienced professional to serve as a Field Epidemiologist based out of our Marlborough location. Field Epidemiologists in Massachusetts are responsible for disease intervention activities, as well as data collection and quality improvement activities. The position involves extensive travel throughout the Central MA region of the Commonwealth, and significant time spent in clinical settings.

The Field Epidemiologist will follow-up on cases of sexually transmitted infections (STI), including HIV, and will assist patients with obtaining STI/HIV medical care and support services. This evolving sector of public health response includes contact tracing, which involves working with diagnosed individuals to ascertain information about their sex and/or drug-injection partners, notifying partners of the STI/HIV exposure, and facilitating access to infectious disease testing and to medical care for partners that test positive. The Field Epidemiologist will also conduct interviews for HIV-positive persons identified as out-of-care or sub-optimally engaged in care, to re-engage patients with the healthcare system.

Additional activities may include providing referrals to case management and human services programs, such as to substance use disorder treatment or housing specialists, and performing field phlebotomy and other specimen collection as needed.

Data collection and data entry are core components of the Field Epidemiologist position. The Field Epidemiologist will enter data collected from patient and provider interviews into a surveillance and case management database system in real time, as cases are being worked.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Contact healthcare providers to collect information related to a patient’s STI/HIV diagnosis. Offer guidance and technical assistance to providers related to CDC STI/HIV guidelines and best practices, as needed. Candidate may also retrieve information from medical records systems and may be embedded in a clinical setting as the DPH DSTDP liaison for that organization.
• Communicate with patients by phone and in person, to provide partner services, which includes collecting information about sex and/or injection drug use behaviors, providing counseling and health education, and eliciting details about patients’ sex and/or drug-injection partners for the purpose of conducting confidential exposure notifications. Activities may also include providing referrals to facilitate linkage-to-medical care and other relevant support services.
• Confidentially notify sex and/or drug-injection partners about STI/HIV exposures and other infectious diseases of public health importance as needed, and collect demographic, risk, and other relevant information.
• Document data collected from patient and provider interviews in an electronic surveillance and case management database. Extract and analyze data reports for case management purposes.
• Perform phlebotomy, and other specimen collection as needed, in field-based settings to facilitate completion of infectious disease laboratory tests. Deliver medication to clinics on an as-needed basis.
• Collect, analyze, and clearly communicate information to stakeholders at meetings and in other clinical settings to support program objectives.
• Participate on quality improvement teams and in quality assurance special projects.
• Aforementioned duties require travel throughout the Central MA region of the Commonwealth in personal vehicle, for which mileage is reimbursed at the negotiated rate of the bargaining unit.