TB Notes Newsletter
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No. 3, 2008
2008 EIS Conference a Success for DTBE
CDC’s 57th annual Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Conference was held in Atlanta April 14–18, 2008. EIS is a 2-year postgraduate program of service and on-the-job training for health professionals interested in the practice of applied epidemiology. Experienced epidemiologists throughout CDC and in state and local health departments act as day-to-day mentors or primary supervisors to EIS officers. Every year, this conference serves as a robust mix of scientific presentations by current EIS officers and recruitment activities for the incoming class of officers.
At this year’s conference, all five of our current EIS officers showcased their work in oral presentations, and DTBE successfully recruited three new EIS officers from the incoming class. In addition, one state-based officer gave an oral presentation on a TB-related topic.
TB-related presentations at EIS Conference
Heather Menzies, MD, MPH, EIS Class of 2006, finishing her second year assigned to the International Research and Programs Branch (IRPB), presented “Epidemiology of Tuberculosis Among Foreign-born Children and Adolescents in the United States, 1994–2006” in the well-attended TB session entitled “Don’t Stand So Close To Me — Tuberculosis,” moderated by DTBE branch chiefs Eugene McCray, MD, and Thomas Navin, MD.
Ann Buff, MD, MPH, EIS Class of 2006, finishing her second year assigned to the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Outbreak Investigations Branch (SEOIB), presented “Investigation of an International Traveler with Suspected Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis — United States, 2007” in the TB session.
Emily Bloss, PhD, MPH, MA, EIS Class of 2007, finishing her first year assigned to IRPB, presented “Treatment-Related Adverse Events Among Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis Patients — Latvia, 2000–2003” in the TB session.
Rinn Song, MD, EIS Class of 2007, finishing his first year assigned to IRPB, presented “Impact of Antiretroviral Therapy and Cotrimoxazole Preventive Therapy on Survival of HIV-Infected Patients with Tuberculosis — Cambodia, 2007” in the TB session.
Mitesh Desai, MD, MPH, EIS Class of 2007, finishing his first year assigned to SEOIB, presented “Geospatial Mapping to Investigate a Tuberculosis Outbreak — South Carolina, 2005–2007” during the late-breaker session, which was moderated by Doug Hamilton and Bruce Bernard on the closing day of the conference.
Emily Piercefield, MD, DVM, MS, EIS Class of 2007, finishing her first year assigned to the Oklahoma Department of Health, presented “Transplantation-Transmitted Tuberculosis — Oklahoma, 2007” in the TB session.
New EIS Officers
Following are abbreviated versions of biographical sketches that were included in TB Notes No. 2, 2008:
Phillip Ricks, PhD, MPH, EIS Class of 2008 (incoming) will be one of the new EIS officers in IRPB. A Chicago native, Philip attended Princeton University, graduating with a BA in 1985. From 1985 to 1992 he worked in the commercial sector in New York City, then returned to Chicago in 1993 to pursue an MPH at the University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health (UIC-SPH). To complete his Masters practicum, he interned at the World Health Organization in Copenhagen, Denmark (WHO EURO), then joined WHO EURO to work in infectious disease surveillance. He spent 6 years in Copenhagen, where he also worked as an epidemiologist for the Danish Institute of Health (Staten Serum Institut) and as the founding lead data manager on an international AIDS/HIV research study. In 2002, he returned to UIC-SPH for his PhD, writing his dissertation on the control of TB among substance users.
Sean Cavanaugh, MD, EIS Class of 2008 (incoming) will be one of the new EIS officers in IRPB. Sean grew up in Washington, DC, and attended Duke University in North Carolina. He returned to Washington, DC, to work as a case manager for several years before enrolling in medical school at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NYC. He received his MD in 1997, then served an internal medicine residency at New York University and Bellevue Hospital, which he completed in 2000. He stayed on as Chief Resident for a year, then joined the Manhattan Veterans Administration (VA) as an associate program director at NYU. He has been working as a clinician educator since that time and has sent legions of former medical residents to the EIS over the years before taking his own advice.
Krista Powell, MD, EIS Class of 2008 (incoming) will be the new EIS Officer for SEOIB. Krista grew up in Cairo, Georgia. She received her BS degree in microbiology from UGA in Athens, where she was selected for membership in the Phi Beta Kappa Society and graduated summa cum laude. She obtained both her MPH in epidemiology and her MD from Emory University. She is in her last year of a 3-year residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She has already developed an appreciation for the complexities of conducting investigations of TB in her ongoing work on a cross-sectional study of smear-negative TB in persons with HIV infection in Kampala, Uganda, which she presented at the ATS meeting in Toronto.
DTBE congratulates our fine EIS officers on their excellent presentations and welcomes the three new faces to our Division.
—Reported by Kevin Cain, MD, and Tim Holtz, MD
Div of TB Elimination
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