How We Serve
EIS officers protect the public’s health by serving CDC, other public health agencies and partners.
While working in their assignments and deployments, they
- Conduct or participate in field investigations
- Design, conduct, and interpret epidemiological analyses
- Evaluate public health surveillance systems
- Give public health talks about their work
- Give oral presentations to scientific audiences
- Write scientific manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals
- Write concise public health updates communicating timely information
- Write abstracts
- Communicate complex scientific concepts to lay audiences
Fun Facts
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- Active officers deploy more than 200 times in any given year to support field investigations for public health threats within the U.S. and around the world. Learn more about deployment during Ebola here pdf icon[727 KB, 1 Page, 508].
- Approximately 85% of EIS graduates enter the public health workforce.
Service Highlights
EIS officers have responded to a multitude of major health threats since 1951, including
- Investigating biological warfare during the Korean war
- Participating in the worldwide smallpox eradication campaign in the 1960s and 1970s
- Discovering the microbes that cause Legionnaires’ disease, Lassa fever, and AIDS
- Investigating and responding to outbreaks and incidents related to Anthrax, SARS, and flu subtypes H1N1 and H5N1
- Providing disaster relief following Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Katrina, and 9/11
- Providing on-the-ground response to Ebola and Zika virus outbreaks.
Learn More
- 2019 EIS Annual Update Report pdf icon[4 MB, 6 Pages, 508]
- CDC Current Outbreak List: types of investigations that involve EIS officers
- CDC 24/7 response
Page last reviewed: July 16, 2019