NC Institute for Public Health Staff test questionnaire and mobile data collection equipment for a community health assessment.
Team Epi-Aid was an initiative of the NC Institute for Public Health from 2003-2016. Funded through CDC preparedness programs (UNC Center for Public Health Preparedness 2003-2009; UNC Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center 2010-2016), Team Epi-Aid was designed to provide UNC graduate public health students with practical public health experience in applied projects for state and local health departments in North Carolina, while providing these departments with workforce surge capacity and students contributed over 6,000 total volunteer hours.
Over the life of the program, Team Epi-Aid engaged hundreds of students and provided support for activities ranging from outbreak investigation, surveillance, pre-disaster planning, post-disaster rapid needs assessments, community health assessments, and other activities. Based on the success of Team Epi-Aid, the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health is currently in the process of developing an expanded version of the program that supports a broader range of applied public health activities and projects.
Horney JA, Davis MK, Ricchetti-Masterson KL, MacDonald PDM. Fueling the public health workforce pipeline through student surge capacity response teams. J Community Health. 2014; 39:35–39.
MacDonald PDM. Team Epi-Aid: Graduate student assistance with urgent public health response. Public Health Rep. 2005; 120(Suppl 1): 35–41.
