September 25, 2024  — Today the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) was awarded more than 28 million from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to advance the field of applied epidemiology to maximize health.  

The award under the five-year National Partners Cooperative Agreement from the CDC Public Health Infrastructure Center (PHIC) provides capacity-building assistance to state, Tribal, local, and territorial applied epidemiologists. Across 51 projects CSTE received funding that strengthens the applied epidemiology workforce through funding for data modernization; fellowship and training programs; acute, chronic, emerging, and infectious disease projects; preparedness work; and forecasting and modeling.

“Applied epidemiologists protect our health every day—their work drives and informs everything we do in public health.  While they are often referred to as the backbone of public health, I like to think of them as the heart and soul, too.  Ensuring that we have a strong and thriving applied epidemiologist governmental public health workforce is a critical component of a national public health system,” said Janet Hamilton, MPH, CSTE Executive Director.  “We are grateful of CDC’s astute recognition of this through their investment and look forward to continuing to work with CDC, our partners, and applied epidemiologists in health departments across the U.S. to achieve our vision of thriving and healthy people and communities everywhere.”

The CDC cooperative agreement aims to increase the knowledge, skill, and ability to deliver essential public health services, improve organizational and systems capacity and capability to address prioritized, equity-based public health priorities, and strengthen the nation's public health infrastructure and performance.  CDC's goal is to fund organizations that have the capability, expertise, resources, and national reach to support public health infrastructure and workforce needs.

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CSTE is an organization of member states and territories representing public health epidemiologists and is the professional home for applied epidemiologists representing multiple levels of public health practice.  CSTE works to advance public health policy and epidemiologic capacity and also provides information, education, and developmental support of practicing epidemiologists in a wide range of areas as well as expertise for program and data efforts.  For more information visit www.cste.org.

CSTE Media Contacts: Amy Burnett Heldman, aheldman@cste.org; Matthew Cone, mcone@cste.org