CDC Paula E. Jayne Fellowship for Adolescent & School Health

Description

A research opportunity is available in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) located in Atlanta, Georgia. The Paula E. Jayne Fellowship for Adolescent & School Health is currently available within the Research Application and Evaluation Branch of the Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) within the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP). CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health works with and through schools to understand and improve the health and well-being of all students by strengthening school-based education, health services, healthy school environments, and community connections.

Research Project

Under the guidance of a mentor, you will have the opportunity to participate in DASH's research, evaluation, and translation efforts supporting child, adolescent, and school health. Specifically, you will gain experience engaging with CDC staff to:

• Design and implement research synthesis or analytic plans analyzing data on adolescent and school health from complex sample surveys (e.g., Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, School Health Profiles) and panel data (e.g., Teen Pulse Survey)
• Disseminate key findings from data synthesis or analysis through scientific journal articles and presentations at national or regional scientific conferences
• Develop scientifically informed tools and materials to support school health
• Engage with CDC staff on the provision of technical experience on school health programs to recipients funded for school health programs

Learning Objectives

Under the guidance of mentors, you will train to:

• Identify gaps in the scientific literature on child, adolescent, or school health, and design synthesis or analytic plans to address those gaps
• Synthesize and/or analyze data to identify key findings and practical recommendations for DASH programmatic work with schools
• Share findings from data synthesis or analyses through the development of peer reviewed manuscripts, presentations to scientific audiences, CDC reports, and tools and materials to support schools
• Collaborate with CDC staff to learn about the provision of technical assistance to CDC's funded recipients for school health programs

Qualifications

The qualified candidate should have received a master's or doctoral degree in one of the relevant fields. Degree must have been received within the past five years.

Preferred Skills

• Good oral and written communication skills (for example: presentations, website content, fact sheets, etc.)
• Experience participating in teams and engaging with partners
• Experience applying quantitative data collection and analysis, including use of complex sample survey data, multi-level modeling, multi-variate analysis
• Experience analyzing data using R, SUDAAN, or other statistical software
• Experience applying data science and informatics methods and developing reproducible analytic workflows, automated reports, and/or data dashboards
• Experience applying research synthesis skills
• Experience translating scientific findings into plain language materials
• Experience in epidemiology, public health, social sciences, statistics, or a closely related field
• Experience disseminating research and evaluation findings through publication in scientific manuscripts and presentations to scientific audiences
• Experience with K-12 schools or in child or adolescent health

Pay

• Stipend: $5,439.00 – $6,581.00 monthly

Schedule

• Anticipated appointment start date: September 30, 2026 (flexible)
• Appointment length: initially one year, may be renewed upon recommendation of CDC and is contingent on the availability of funds
• Full time

Mentor: Caitlin Merlo (cmerlo@cdc.gov)

Citizenship: U.S. citizens only

Reference Code: CDC-2026-0071

Application Deadline: 11/6/2026 3:00:00 PM Eastern Time