CDC as a Career Path for Social Workers National Association of Deans and Directors Atlanta, GA October 26, Bryce D. Smith, PhD, MSSW

Agenda  Background  Opportunities for Social Workers at CDC  Full-time employees  Fellowships and internships  Doctoral preparation for CDC 2

Background  University of Texas at Austin – MSSW  Substance Abuse and Mental Health  Clinical mental health for seven years  University of Georgia at Athens – PhD  Research methods  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  HIV/AIDS prevention – five years  Viral hepatitis prevention – three years Public/private partnerships through the CDC Foundation 3

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  HIV/AIDS prevention  Program Evaluation Data collection for state and local health departments Multi-site evaluations of HIV prevention interventions  Viral hepatitis prevention  Hepatitis C screening studies  Guidelines development  Cost effectiveness studies  Hepatitis C rapid test evaluations  Hepatitis C treatment and prevention in opiate agonist settings 4

Opportunities for Social Workers at CDC  Health Scientists  Behavioral Scientists  Policy Analysts  Development of guidelines and other policies  Fellowships  Student internships and fellowships  Post-doc research fellowships   5

Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE)  ORISE fellows serve in many capacities all over CDC, at both masters and doctoral levels  Most masters level fellows have an MPH, but not always   6

Selected Content Areas for Social Workers  Infectious disease  HIV/AIDS, STIs, Viral Hepatitis, TB  Injury prevention  Chronic disease (cardiovascular disease, obesity, nutrition, cancer)  Adolescent and school health  Adult and community health  Reproductive health 7

Doctoral Preparation for CDC  Protocol development – what is that?  Leave the case-study design to the Masters program  Delve more deeply into rigorous designs, including RCTs and other comparison group designs  Develop more research proposals  Increase emphasis on evaluation  Focus on commonalities of evaluation methods across content areas  Formative evaluations, process monitoring and evaluation, outcomes monitoring and evaluation 8

Thanks! 9