Identifying the Unique Skills and Roles of Disease Intervention Specialists in the Public Health Landscape

Abstract

Objective:

Disease intervention specialists (DISs) play a crucial role in the public health workforce by conducting essential tasks such as contact tracing, contact interviews, and providing referrals for services to control disease spread. Despite the importance of DISs, research is lacking on the job tasks that they perform and the role that they serve in public health agencies. The objective of this study was to identify the unique skill sets of DISs relative to other public health occupations.

Methods:

We used a national dataset of job postings in the United States to conduct a comparative analysis of the skills required for 3 occupations: DISs, epidemiologists, and community health workers. We examined job listings posted from July 2022 through February 2023 to determine the frequency of certain skills, and we tested for significant differences in skill mentions across these occupations.

Results:

Job postings for DISs were significantly more likely than those for community health workers and epidemiologists to require expertise in areas such as case management (30%), communicable disease control (49%), infectious disease knowledge (33%), and disease prevention techniques (18%).

Conclusions:

This study highlights the specialized nature of DISs in managing disease-related public health interventions and supporting population health. Improved data collection is needed to support workforce planning, training, and policy development to ensure the continued effectiveness and reach of DISs in public health systems.

Keywords

disease intervention specialist standard occupational classification public health

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