The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) is seeking an Epidemiologist for the Social Epidemiology Unit. This unit uses quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the impacts of social determinants on individual and population health in Los Angeles County, with a particular focus on health equity. These types of analyses are critical not only for understanding why some groups have worse health outcomes than other groups, but also for identifying policies, programs, and services that can reduce these inequities. The Epidemiologist will assist with setting the agenda for the social epidemiology research program, will plan and conduct studies, and will assist with disseminating study findings and recommendations.

The Epidemiologist will help determine health equity and examine social determinants of health; conduct social epidemiological studies, and social science research, and/or biostatistics; design and conduct quantitative studies using advanced statistical methods such as multilevel modeling and work with large datasets.

Essential Job Functions 

• Use complex data analytic and statistical methods such as multilevel analysis to examine the relationship between social determinants of health, such as poverty, education, and employment conditions, and disease outcomes.
• Assist with obtaining data sources from multiple sectors such as housing, education, and labor, to conduct social epidemiological studies pertaining to communicable and non-communicable diseases.
• Perform data cleaning, processing, and integration of datasets from disparate sources to prepare the data for analyses.
• Conduct descriptive analyses to examine trends and patterns in the data.
• Assist with identifying existing metrics, tools, analytic methods, and datasets to measure the impact of social determinants on health in the county over time, and develop new metrics, tools, analytic methods, and datasets as needed.
• Prepare reports and recommendations, abstracts, and peer-reviewed publications based on study findings and assist with the dissemination of findings.

Requirements:

OPTION I: A Master's degree* from an accredited college or university with specialization in epidemiology -AND- three (3) years of full-time experience assisting in the design, conduct, and evaluation of epidemiologic studies and field investigations.

                                                                         -OR-

OPTION II: A Doctoral degree* from an accredited college or university with a specialization in epidemiology.

DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS:

• Experience working with modeling techniques to predict trends or assess the impact of public health efforts in chronic and infectious disease prevention and control (e.g. such as but not limited to discrete event modeling, agent-based modeling, and related data simulations).
• Experience working with Epidemiologic research methodology (e.g. epidemiologic measures, study design, stratified analysis techniques).
• Experience working with advanced statistics (e.g. Poisson, generalized linear, logistic, logic, negative binomial, hierarchical, and Bayesian regression).
• Experience working with Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) programming language (e.g. merging, concatenating and transposing large datasets, and using macros, arrays, SQL).
• Experience working with large Public Datasets (e.g. US Census, NHANES and NHIS)
• Experience working with the Institutional Review Boards (IRB), Records Act and Freedom of Information Act.
• Experience preparing Peer-reviewed manuscripts, health briefs, or health impact assessments.
• Experience in leading public health program evaluations and investigations, such as outbreaks, clusters, and contact investigations, and conducting outreach initiatives among high risk populations.

Persons interested in this position should submit a resume and cover letter to Rashmi Shetgiri at rshetgiri@ph.lacounty.gov.   Please note, you must still submit the employment application at 
https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/lacounty/jobs/1220535/epidemiologist .