Epidemiologist – Overdose Surveillance - Nashville, TN

STI • Nashville, TN

7d • Onsite

About The Position

This role focuses on nonfatal overdose surveillance, developing expertise in the Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE) to support statewide surveillance. The position involves collaborating with staff to define and validate surveillance for emerging substances, integrating data from various systems, and training team members. Additionally, the role includes developing and maintaining monthly overdose burden reports, evaluating data sources, designing automated reporting tools, performing quality assurance, and presenting findings to internal stakeholders.

Requirements

• Experience conducting epidemiologic analyses using large administrative or surveillance datasets.
• Experience with SAS, SQL, R, Tableau, or similar analytic and visualization software.
• Knowledge of public health surveillance systems, syndromic surveillance, or overdose surveillance is preferred.
• Experience with study design, data quality assessment, statistical analysis, and interpretation of public health data.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience preparing technical reports and presenting findings to diverse audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively within multidisciplinary teams and manage multiple projects simultaneously.

Nice To Haves

• Master's degree in Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Public Health, or a related field.
• Curious, collaborative, and detail-oriented epidemiologist who enjoys solving complex analytic problems and translating data into actionable public health information.
• Comfortable learning new surveillance systems, evaluating data quality, developing innovative surveillance products, and communicating findings to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong commitment to continuous learning, teamwork, and improving overdose prevention efforts.

Responsibilities

• Develop expertise in the Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE) and support statewide nonfatal overdose surveillance.
• Collaborate with surveillance staff to develop and validate surveillance definitions for emerging substances, including medetomidine, vape shop products, cannabis, and other emerging drug classes.
• Collaborate with internal partners to support integration of ESSENCE data with REDCap and other surveillance systems.
• Train team members on ESSENCE workflows, surveillance definitions, and data management processes.
• Develop and maintain standardized monthly overdose burden reports to support internal planning and decision-making.
• Evaluate available surveillance data sources to identify the most appropriate data for routine reporting.
• Design and maintain automated reporting tools to efficiently produce monthly trend reports.
• Perform quality assurance reviews to ensure data completeness, accuracy, and consistency prior to dissemination.
• Present surveillance findings and provide technical guidance on interpretation of overdose trends to internal stakeholders.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level