A New CDC-sponsored Project Needs High School Teachers and Future Epidemiologists
Careers in public health and epidemiology may be some of the fastest growing jobs in health care, but very few high school students have exposure to these fields. This year, the CDC has partnered with Madison-based Reciprocal Sciences to launch EpiLab, a project that offers high school students hands-on experience running their own public health investigation.

Teachers interested in participating in the course will receive complete lesson plans on epidemiology and respiratory health, and the equipment, training and expert assistance required to help their students conduct an asthma surveillance project in the classroom.

Students will review and practice the basic concepts and methods of epidemiology and then collect data from their peers using standardized questionnaires and anthropometric and pulmonary function measurements. The final lesson guides students through the analysis, interpretation and presentation of their data, encouraging them to develop hypotheses and to compare and discuss their results with those collected by EpiLab classrooms around the world.

The goal of EpiLab is to give students a taste of real-world epidemiology and scientific research by creating and performing their own surveillance project. In addition, the data from EpiLab classrooms is helping to fill an important gap in our understanding of asthma rates among teenagers.

If you or teachers you know would like to start an EpiLab classroom in your school please contact David Van Sickle, project coordinator, at info@epilab.org or (608) 554-0750.

EpiLab flier pdf