Senior Epidemiologist - Custody Health Services

County of Santa Clara•Santa Clara, CA

About The Position

The Senior Epidemiologist conducts complex investigative and analytical epidemiologic work using epidemiologic and statistical methods. The role leads investigations and data projects focused on preventing and controlling communicable and chronic diseases, injuries, and other health conditions. It may contribute to health programs, policies, surveillance systems, and disease-prevention strategies, and may lead lower-level professional Epidemiologists. This full-time, day-shift position is in Custody Health Services (CHS), which provides medical, mental health, and dental services to people in custody at four Santa Clara County detention facilities: Main Jail, Elmwood, Juvenile Hall, and James Ranch. The selected candidate must be able to work in a correctional facility and pass a background check for security clearance. The role may require travel to alternate work locations and may be assigned Disaster Service Worker duties.

Requirements

One of the following education and experience combinations: a master's degree or higher in Epidemiology, Public Health, Biostatistics, Health Informatics, Mathematics, Statistics, Data Science, Social Science, or a closely related field, plus four years of full-time epidemiologic work experience; a bachelor's degree in one of those fields plus six years of full-time epidemiologic work experience; or two years of experience equivalent to a County of Santa Clara Epidemiologist II.
Qualifying experience must include epidemiologic functions such as surveillance, data collection, data analysis, and research in a public health or healthcare delivery setting, or in an academic setting through internships, fellowships, or assistant research positions, as specified for the applicable education pathway.
A doctoral degree in a listed or closely related field may substitute for one year of the required epidemiology work experience.
Ability to travel to alternate locations in the course of work.
If driving, a valid California Driver's License before appointment and the ability to qualify for and maintain County driver authorization.
Ability to pass a background check for security clearance and work in a correctional facility.
Knowledge of epidemiology, public health investigations, communicable and chronic disease control, biostatistics, research methods, surveillance systems, data stewardship, data quality, relational databases, data extraction and querying, scripting, statistical and data science methods, and data visualization.
Ability to lead and train staff; maintain databases; clean, mine, analyze, and integrate data; design dashboards and reports; apply quantitative and qualitative research methods; and communicate effectively with people from diverse backgrounds.

Responsibilities

Lead monitoring and analysis of population health and health disparities, including State, County, City, and census-tract data.
Work with senior leadership to establish data analytic goals and provide findings to support decision-making.
Lead production and dissemination of dashboards, reports, maps, and visualizations for internal and external stakeholders.
Contribute to data governance policies and develop standards and best practices for data validation, analysis, presentation, and stewardship.
Lead epidemiologic investigations and public health assessments, including outbreak investigations and studies of diseases and other health conditions.
Design, develop, manage, and evaluate surveillance systems, surveys, survey tools, surveillance plans, and health needs assessments.
Collect, extract, manage, match, query, profile, and analyze data from multiple databases and sources; assess data quality and fitness for purpose.
Apply epidemiologic methods, advanced statistical techniques, and predictive, cost-benefit, and return-on-investment analyses as appropriate.
Develop research questions and hypotheses, conduct or oversee literature reviews and studies, and support program design, policy development, publications, and evaluation.
Prepare, write, edit, review, and approve reports, presentations, posters, visualizations, and other communications for professional audiences, policymakers, and the public.
Provide technical advice and assistance to public health programs and outside partners on data quality, collection methods, tools, analysis, reporting, and use of epidemiologic data.
Train, onboard, coach, and provide technical guidance and quality checks for lower-level Epidemiologists and other staff.
Lead data-related projects, improve data quality and workflows, document and maintain data management procedures, and support data governance and stewardship.
Maintain partnerships with outside data-generating entities and serve as a liaison for data sharing and use.
Develop evidence-based recommendations for disease control and prevention using culturally sensitive approaches.
Participate in grant and funding proposal writing and may develop requests for proposals, oversee contracts, and review contract work.
Maintain accurate, secure records and address ethical, privacy, and security requirements for health data.
Present findings to professionals, policymakers, community groups, conferences, and research meetings, and participate in relevant committees and workgroups.
May be assigned Disaster Service Worker duties and perform other related duties as required.