Data Analyst IV, Texas HHS

Job Description

Data Analyst IV – The Laboratory and Infectious Disease Services (LIDS) Division seeks a Data Analyst IV for Public Health Informatics and Data Exchange Group with a strong epidemiologic methods background and to oversee a dynamic team of public health professionals. The Data Analyst provides advanced (senior-level) research and analysis work by planning, conducting, and reporting on projects for the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS). Experienced in program evaluation utilizing multiple methods of data collection and analyses. Experienced in working with large data sets, health-related data, and programming languages such as SAS.

Essential Job Functions

Attends work on a regular and predictable schedule in accordance with agency leave policy and performs other duties as assigned.

• (35%) Serves as team lead for group of epidemiologists responsible for continuous assessment of NEDSS data quality validation, data quality assurance, data integrity, and coordinating and liaising with various disease programs who contribute data feeds to NEDSS. Reviews and validates all the statistical logics involved in data cleaning and management process to ensure consistency, integrity, and accuracy of data. Oversees the development, update, and maintenance of data dictionaries, data quality assurance documentation, and data management guidelines. Responsible for designing evaluation plans including development of evaluation designs, goals and objectives, project timelines, and instruments. Support visualization of data using various approaches to enable identification of inconsistent data patterns and data quality concerns and for public health results reporting. Oversees data documentations, protocols, analytic plans, reports, manuscripts and presentation of study findings applying epidemiologic methods and best practices in public health science. Provides guidance and appropriate training to epi team and ensures epi team are informed on latest guidance.
• (25%) Works in concert with staff from other areas of LIDS and DSHS and with staff from local and regional health departments. Assists in running statewide proficiency tests and provides feedback to NEDSS users. Assists in leading communications between the epidemiology teams within LIDS and epidemiology areas related to NEDSS. Contributes to the development of data standards, addressing privacy and data reliability concerns, as well as playing an active role in agency-wide data integration projects. Represents the NEDSS on committees, workgroups, and projects to meet research and data analysis needs. Represents the state at the national level on research and data analysis issues. Applies the principles and methods of epi to provide the epidemiologic component of grant proposals and progress reports.
• (20%) Oversees and contributes to epidemiologic reports useful to NEDSS and DSHS staff, the public, public health, and medical communities. Assists, directs, conducts or participates in epidemiological studies and investigations of infectious diseases. Assembles appropriate epidemiological and laboratory resources to address disease outbreak investigations. Performs statistical analyses using advanced statistical software, interprets results, and writes articles, and reports. Analyzes data and proposes epidemiological studies based upon data gathered through surveillance projects and studies. Ensures appropriate communication and dissemination of findings and recommendations. Develops and implements new policies, protocols, and practices within NEDSS for quality assessment of the data accessed to ensure that scientific and standardized systems and processes are implemented uniformly across the Division
• (15%) Serves as resource scientist/consultant and provides scientific/technical expertise to the NEDSS and other areas in DSHS, other agencies, and/or the general public in matters related to epidemiology and surveillance. Prepares written manuscripts for publication in peer review journals. Using power Point and other presentation tools, prepares and conducts oral presentations on infectious disease topics and outbreak response plans to various audiences. Assists in the preparation of summary reports for distribution to local and regional health departments.
• (5%) Other duties as assigned include but are not limited to actively participating and/or serving in a supporting role to meet the agency’s obligations for disaster response and/or recovery or Continuity of Operations (COOP) activation. Such participation may require an alternate shift pattern assignment and/or location.

Initial Selection Criteria

•  MPH with two (2) years of experience in applied public health.
• Knowledge or experience with electronic data exchange nomenclature (e.g., HL7, LOINC, SNOMED-CT).
• Previous work with relational databases in manipulating, analyzing and visualizing data sets.
• Experience using analytic software SAS.
• Experience with SQL language. Preferred.

How to Apply 

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