When the Trump administration introduced in February 2025 that it was chopping 10% of employees on the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, it appeared {that a} small however storied program inside it known as the Epidemic Intelligence Service – also referred to as the CDC’s illness detectives – would even be minimize. A couple of days later, this system was reinstated. And in March, Epidemic Intelligence Service officers traveled to Texas to assist the state’s public well being officers in combating the continued measles epidemic.
However after one other large upheaval on the CDC in April, the unit’s future is unsure. As of now, functions for this system’s subsequent spherical of fellows has been postponed.
The Epidemic Intelligence Service is a dynamic disaster response workforce. Simply as firefighters rush into burning buildings to save lots of lives, this workforce’s specialists mobilize each domestically and internationally to assist curb illness outbreaks. However before everything, it’s a coaching program that has produced a few of the most extremely educated and regarded public well being consultants within the nation who’ve gone on to work at native and state public well being workplaces, educational departments and worldwide well being organizations.
We’re public well being consultants – one an skilled professor who served within the Epidemic Intelligence Service from 1994-1996, and the opposite an early profession trainee who was accepted to its incoming class of 2025-2027. Though it’s not clear how the administration will enact its new imaginative and prescient for the CDC, we hope a continued urgency to establish and battle infectious illness threats – the essence of the Epidemic Intelligence Service – stays a nationwide precedence.
A program rooted in nationwide safety
The Epidemic Intelligence Service is a two-year fellowship open to physicians, scientists and different well being professionals. This system accepts 50 to 80 individuals annually.
College students take part in an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer coaching course in July 1955.
Dr. Alex Langmuir, CDC
The Epidemic Intelligence Service was based in 1951, simply 5 years after the launch of the CDC, in response to Chilly Conflict-era considerations about organic warfare. Alexander Langmuir, its founder, was the CDC’s chief epidemiologist and has usually been known as the daddy of shoe-leather epidemiology – on-the-ground, out-of-the-office illness investigation by way of in depth subject work and engagement with affected populations.
In a report asserting the unit’s institution, Langmuir and a colleague wrote that one of many “problems that would emerge in the event of biological warfare attacks” was “the dearth of trained epidemiologists.” They acknowledged the pressing want for a specialised workforce able to quickly figuring out and responding to potential bioterrorism threats.
Newspaper headlines on April 13, 1955, announce the effectiveness of the polio vaccine.
March of Dimes by way of Wikimedia Commons
The brand new division quickly developed to deal with a variety of civilian public well being threats. In 1955, as considered one of its first main actions, this system’s officers have been tasked with investigating an outbreak of polio in youngsters that began simply as the primary mass vaccination marketing campaign towards the illness launched. Inside weeks, Epidemic Intelligence Service officers helped hint the outbreak to some batches of a vaccine manufactured by a California firm known as Cutter Laboratories through which the virus had not been correctly killed. The incident led to elevated security laws in vaccine manufacturing and boosted public confidence, paving the way in which to eliminating polio from the U.S. within the ensuing many years.
The Epidemic Intelligence Service has led the way in which in tackling lots of the most traditionally important outbreaks of the previous 75 years. Beginning in 1966, the unit’s officers have been deployed to West Africa to help in a worldwide smallpox eradication marketing campaign that laid the groundwork for eliminating the illness 13 years later. In 1976, the illness detectives have been despatched to analyze an outbreak in Philadelphia of a mysterious lethal sickness. They helped to characterize what would ultimately be referred to as Legionnaires’ illness, a beforehand unknown bacterial reason for pneumonia.
And in 1981, a tip from an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer serving within the Los Angeles County Well being Division led to the primary description of a brand new illness that might grow to be the worldwide epidemic of HIV-AIDS. This system’s officers went on to assist lead foundational research on prevalence, prevention and therapy of AIDS world wide.
Past vaccines and immunization
Even from its earliest days, vaccine-preventable and infectious ailments have been removed from the Epidemic Intelligence Service’s solely focus. Throughout this system’s first 15 years, its officers have been concerned in a large swath of epidemiological investigations in areas together with lead paint publicity, a most cancers cluster’s connection to beginning defects, household planning practices and famine reduction.
These actions established the group’s priorities of addressing persistent ailments and inhabitants well being – objectives which have additionally pushed its involvement in catastrophe response efforts, together with hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria and Katrina, in addition to the terrorist assaults on Sept. 11, 2001.
The Epidemic Intelligence Service has additionally performed a key function in maintaining the nation’s meals provide secure. It investigates main outbreaks of foodborne sicknesses, serving to to establish which meals are implicated in order that contaminated merchandise are faraway from cabinets and disseminating investigation findings that inform meals security coverage. For instance, officers investigated a 1993 outbreak of Escherichia coli O157:H7 linked to undercooked hamburgers at a number of Jack within the Field eating places. The outbreak sickened greater than 700 individuals and resulted within the deaths of 4 youngsters. It additionally led to main meals security reforms together with expanded meat and poultry inspection nationwide.
The CDC’s “disease detectives” practice at websites throughout the U.S. and overseas.
A legacy of impression
The significance of an skilled, nimble workforce of illness detectives has solely elevated. Over the previous few years, Epidemic Intelligence Service officers have responded to numerous public well being threats.
This system’s officers have been concerned at each stage of the COVID-19 pandemic response, conducting outbreak investigations on cruise ships, in prisons and in lots of different settings. They investigated the outbreak of monkeypox within the U.S. in 2022. Most just lately they’ve investigated circumstances of avian influenza and are working to assist describe and management the continued measles outbreak in Texas.
Maybe the Epidemic Intelligence Service’s most important legacy has been in constructing a worldwide community of deep epidemiological experience. To this point, this system has educated greater than 4,000 illness detectives, and its officers have collectively performed hundreds of outbreak investigations.
The unit’s impression has been world. It has been known as in to analyze outbreaks on six continents and has served as a mannequin for epidemiology applications developed in dozens of nations.
All of those actions, at house and overseas, have formed well being coverage in essential ways in which in flip shield individuals’s well being. It’s more and more clear that illness outbreaks will proceed to happen within the U.S. and overseas. In our view, the Epidemic Intelligence Service’s historical past supplies wealthy proof of its worth.
