The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is one of the largest government agencies in the United States, and some students might look into the emergency management jobs available with the CDC. The CDC prides itself on helping individuals living in the country. It provides support to hospitals and other facilities, tracks certain types of diseases and ensures that the public is aware of potential health hazards. The CDC also has some specific jobs available in the field of emergency management.
Emergency Response Specialists
According to the CDC, emergency response specialists are responsible for training communities and medical facilities for emergency situations. They create drills that test how quickly and how well a facility responds to an infection or an outbreak of another disease. Specialists essentially ensure that those communities and workers know how to respond. After a natural disaster, an infectious disease outbreak or another problem, those specialists can also come right to the area and help cities and communities decide which options are best for them. Some specialists work on-call and only work when an emergency occurs.
Public Health Advisors
Emergency management jobs available with the CDC include public health advisors. Advisors are diseases specialists and help communities better understand their particular risks for certain diseases and how the spread of those diseases can impact everyone living in that area. Advisors often work with at-risk groups to reduce the risk of those groups contracting certain diseases. They work with impoverished people, new immigrants to the country and people living in both rural areas and cities who have limited health care options. They also advise groups of people after an outbreak of tuberculosis or another disease occurs.
Health Education Specialists
Health education specialists are one of the few emergency management jobs available with the CDC that deals specifically with the prevention of infectious diseases. Tuberculosis, Ebola and other diseases and infections can quickly spread from one person to hundreds of people in just a few days. Health education specialists believe that proper training and educating people on different diseases can help them better identify the symptoms of those conditions and seek medical help before those diseases spread. When the CDC tracks the spread of a new infection or disease, it will send some of its education specialists into those affected areas to give the public information and help.
Medical Officers
Medical officers working for the CDC can work full-time throughout the year or on an emergency on-call basis. These officers work in specific fields and research health topics. They are the ones who track certain types of diseases back to patient zero. Patient zero is the person responsible for spreading a disease or infection through a community or through a specific group of people. Medical officers can also help after an emergency situation to educate others on preventing that disease from spreading and helping doctors determine the best way to treat that disease.
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The CDC has its main headquarters in Georgia and smaller offices located across the country. It needs workers with college degrees and strong skills to help stop certain diseases from spreading across different cultural groups. Those looking at the emergency management jobs available with the CDC will find that the CDC needs trained and dependable health educators, medical officers, public health advisors and emergency management specialists.